Optimal Foraging Theory: Lessons and Application to Adaptive Engineering Systems

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Lehman
Keyword(s):  
Optimal Foraging ◽  
Biological Systems ◽  
Theory Development ◽  
Complete Information ◽  
Optimal Foraging Theory ◽  
Foraging Theory ◽  
Standard Test ◽  
Biological Behavior ◽  
Reproductive Value ◽  
Test Bed

In biological systems, optimal strategy is generally defined as optimizing fitness, measured as reproductive value (RV), the expectation of producing surviving offspring from time t onward, given that an organism is in state S(t). Any action can be associated with an expectation of immediate reproductive success. Maximum RV results from the action that maximizes the sum of immediate and future surviving offspring. Adaptive biological behavior is the product of historical experience, heritability, individual variation, and differential fitness among individuals. Foraging tasks are a standard test bed for robot research because of their applicability to many problems. Optimal foraging theory offers explanations and predictions with direct applicability to engineering problems. Much theory development involves optimal solutions based on complete information about the system, but animals do not always conform to predictions of such models. Adaptive approximations to optimality in biological systems offer models for design of engineered systems.

Optimal foraging: theory and experiment

Nature ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 268 (5621) ◽  
pp. 583-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Krebs
Keyword(s):  
Optimal Foraging ◽  
Optimal Foraging Theory ◽  
Foraging Theory ◽  
Theory And Experiment

Testing optimal foraging theory models on benthic divers

2016 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 127-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dahlia Foo ◽  
Jayson M. Semmens ◽  
John P.Y. Arnould ◽  
Nicole Dorville ◽  
Andrew J. Hoskins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Optimal Foraging ◽  
Optimal Foraging Theory ◽  
Foraging Theory

scholarly journals Beyond Depression? A Review of the Optimal Foraging Theory Literature in Zooarchaeology and Archaeobotany

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Lena Jones ◽  
David A. Hurley
Keyword(s):  
Optimal Foraging ◽  
Optimal Foraging Theory ◽  
Foraging Theory ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Resource Depression ◽  
Environmental Interactions ◽  
Prey Populations

The use of optimal foraging theory in archaeology has been criticized for focusing heavily on “negative” human-environmental interactions, particularly anthropogenic resource depression, in which prey populations are reduced by foragers’ own foraging activities. In addition, some researchers have suggested the focus on resource depression is more common in the zooarchaeological literature than in the archaeobotanical literature, indicating fundamental differences in the ways zooarchaeologists and archaeobotanists approach the archaeological record. In this paper, we assess these critiques through a review of the literature between 1997 and 2017. We find that studies identifying resource depression occur at similar rates in the archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological literature. In addition, while earlier archaeological applications of optimal foraging theory did focus heavily on the identification of resource depression, the literature published between 2013 and 2017 shows a wider variety of approaches.

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