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Updated: Dec 26, 2025

Author Spotlight: Exploring Behavioral Pathways Through Cross-Species Insights in Foraging and Communication
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Behavioural variability contributes to over-staying in patchy foraging.

Tyler Cash-Padgett1,2, Benjamin Hayden1,2

  • 1Department of Neuroscience, Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA.

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|March 12, 2020
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Behavioral variability in foragers can lead to suboptimal decisions. This study suggests that the tendency to over-stay in patches may be an adaptation to this inherent imprecision, improving overall foraging performance.

Keywords:
decision makingforagingmacaqueover-stayingpatch-leaving

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral Ecology
  • Animal Cognition
  • Decision Making

Background:

  • Foragers often deviate from optimal choices, exhibiting biases in accuracy and precision.
  • These deviations include using suboptimal threshold values and showing variability in applying them.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between foraging accuracy and precision biases.
  • To test if behavioral imprecision explains the accuracy bias of over-staying in patches.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of patch choice data from three rhesus macaques in a computerized foraging task.
  • Simulations to model the impact of variability on optimal foraging thresholds.

Main Results:

  • High levels of behavioral variability were confirmed in macaque foraging choices.
  • Simulations demonstrated that variability necessitates increased leaving thresholds (over-staying) to optimize performance.
  • All subjects exhibited over-staying biases in line with predictions.

Conclusions:

  • Behavioral imprecision can explain, in part, the over-staying bias observed in foragers.
  • Over-staying may represent an adaptive strategy to cope with inherent behavioral variability.