Question

Imagine that you are studying two populations of tropical lizards that inhabit areas where high-quality food items are distributed patchily, and that it takes appreciable time to travel from patch to patch, across wide-open areas. Lizard population A inhabits an area with high predation risk, while population B inhabits an area with low predation risk. How might you expect foraging patterns to differ between these two populations, with respect to group size and the time spent in a given patch? Be sure to discuss foraging economics and the optimal foraging theory in your answer.

Answer 1

Population A - High danger because of predators

Population B - Low danger because of low predators

Assumptions - each group contains an equal number of lizards since the question does not mention the numbers in each group.

What is Foraging economics? -

• The word Foraging means seeking for food resources. It is an important component of predicting animal behavior especially to know their survival instincts in a particular environment. Foraging economics is a behavior ecology model. Since the fittest only survive, animals behave in such a manner to consume more energy and remain fittest in a particular environment at low sacrifice. The type of behavior they adopt are migration and changing of food habits.
• Coming to the behavior of Lizards of group A & B; group A lizards have to work harder to live and earn food since there are predators, however, lizards of group B are in better position than of group A since they have to fear less of predators and can move easily in their patch area.
• Foraging economics applies on human race too, have you noticed that some areas in your country are blessed with good agriculture and fertile soil to grow crops and some area are just miserable with rocky terrains and dynamic climate. This also affects human behavior.

Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT) - OFT is a theory which studies the payoff or result or satisfaction received from a Foraging decision. In the question, the number of energy Lizards of group A & B gets after incurring costs of searching for food and avoiding predators. Predators are constraints which can affect the payoff or result.