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Optimal Foraging

Optimal Foraging

How animals obtain and eat their food is called foraging behavior. Foraging can include searching for plants and hunting for prey and depends on the species and environment.

Distribution and Dispersion

Distribution and Dispersion

To understand intra-specific interactions in populations, scientists measure the spatial arrangement of species individuals. This geographic arrangement is known as the species distribution or dispersion. Highly territorial species exhibit a uniform distribution pattern, in which individuals are spaced at relatively equal distances from one another. Species that are highly tied to particular resources, such as food or shelter, tend to concentrate around those resources, and thus exhibit a...

Habitat Fragmentation

Habitat Fragmentation

Habitat fragmentation describes the division of a more extensive, continuous habitat into smaller, discontinuous areas. Human activities such as land conversion, as well as slower geological processes leading to changes in the physical environment, are the two leading causes of habitat fragmentation. The fragmentation process typically follows the same steps: perforation, dissection, fragmentation, shrinkage, and attrition.

Types of Selection

Types of Selection

Natural selection influences the frequencies of particular alleles and phenotypes within populations in several different ways. Primarily, natural selection can be directional, stabilizing, or disruptive. Directional selection favors one extreme trait and shifts the population towards that phenotype while selecting against individuals displaying alternate traits. Stabilizing selection favors an intermediate trait with a narrow range of variation. Deviation from the optimal phenotype towards an...

Frequency-dependent Selection

Frequency-dependent Selection

When the fitness of a trait is influenced by how common it is (i.e., its frequency) relative to different traits within a population, this is referred to as frequency-dependent selection. Frequency-dependent selection may occur between species or within a single species. This type of selection can either be positive—with more common phenotypes having higher fitness—or negative, with rarer phenotypes conferring increased fitness.

Inclusive Fitness

Inclusive Fitness

Most altruistic behavior—in which one animal helps another at a cost to themselves—occurs between relatives. Scientists think these altruistic behaviors evolved because they increase the inclusive fitness of the animal providing help.

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 8, 2025

Methodology for Developing Life Tables for Sessile Insects in the Field Using the Whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, in Cotton As a Model System

Methodology for Developing Life Tables for Sessile Insects in the Field Using the Whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, in Cotton As a Model System

Published on: November 1, 2017

Habitat selection patterns are density dependent under the ideal free distribution.

Tal Avgar¹, Gustavo S Betini², John M Fryxell²

¹Department of Wildland Resources, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA.

The Journal of Animal Ecology

|September 22, 2020

Summary

Habitat selection models are often unreliable because they don't account for consumer and resource density. This study uses the ideal free distribution (IFD) to explain how these factors cause context-dependent habitat use, improving model transferability.

Keywords:

IFD with costs RSF SDM availability dependence functional response mIFD optimal foraging patch choice

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Last Updated: Dec 8, 2025

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Area of Science:

Ecology
Theoretical Ecology
Behavioral Ecology

Background:

Habitat selection models are widely used but often lack reliability across different ecosystems or time.
Context-dependency, driven by variations in consumer density and resource availability, is a likely reason for this limitation.

Purpose of the Study:

To provide a theoretical framework for understanding consumer and resource density-dependent habitat selection.
To explore the capacity of ecological models to account for these density-dependent effects.

Main Methods:

Revisiting the ideal free distribution (IFD) model, which assumes consumers distribute to equalize fitness.
Developing a fitness-maximizing space use model based on IFD principles.
Analyzing how density-dependent factors influence consumer distribution patterns.

Main Results:

The model demonstrates that resource and consumer density drive shifts in consumer distribution.
Habitat selection outcomes are shown to be nonlinear and potentially non-monotonic.
Habitat selection strength is critically dependent on system-wide characteristics.

Conclusions:

Density-dependent habitat selection provides a mechanistic explanation for context-dependent outcomes in ecological models.
Understanding adaptive behavioral responses is key to making robust ecological inferences.
This approach can improve the reliability and transferability of habitat selection predictions across diverse ecological contexts.