ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Nahua mushroom gatherers use area-restricted search strategies that conform to marginal value theorem predictions.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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20 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Feedback based on simple strategies facilitates strategy execution and selection in foraging.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Article
- Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience.Trends in neurosciences · 2025Review
- A Delayed Response in the Area-Concentrated Search Can Improve Foraging Success.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Grocery Shopping Under Simplified Marginal Value Theorem Predictions.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- C. elegans foraging as a model for understanding the neuronal basis of decision-making.Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS · 2024Review
- Collective incentives reduce over-exploitation of social information in unconstrained human groups.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Attention deficits linked with proclivity to explore while foraging.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Track and dive-based movement metrics do not predict the number of prey encountered by a marine predator.Movement ecology · 2023Article
- A guide to area-restricted search: a foundational foraging behaviour.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2022Review
- Foraging behavior in visual search: A review of theoretical and mathematical models in humans and animals.Psychological research · 2022Review
- Hunter-gatherer foraging networks promote information transmission.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Review
- Spatially and temporally distributed data foraging decisions in disciplinary field science.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2021Article
- Efficient Lévy walks in virtual human foraging.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Hide-and-seek strategies and post-contact immobility.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Games and enculturation: A cross-cultural analysis of cooperative goal structures in Austronesian games.PloS one · 2021Article
- Search as a simple take-the-best heuristic.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- Travel linearity and speed of human foragers and chimpanzees during their daily search for food in tropical rainforests.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Article
- Optimal diving: patch quality, depth, and marginal value.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We develop a method of analysis for testing the marginal value theorem (MVT) in natural settings that does not require an independent definition or mapping of patches. We draw on recent theoretical work on area-restricted search (ARS) that links turning-angle and step-size changes to geographically localized encounter-rates. These models allow us to estimate "giving-up times" using encounter-annotated GPS tracking data. Applied to a case study of Nahua mushroom foragers, these models identify distinct forms of intrapatch and interpatch search behavior, with intrapatch search transitioning to interpatch search after a predictable interval of time since the last encounter with a harvested mushroom. Our empirical estimate of giving-up time coincides with the theoretically optimal giving-up time derived under the MVT in the same environment. The MVT is currently underused in studies of human foraging and settlement patterns, due in large part to the difficulty of identifying discrete resource patches and quantifying their characteristics. Our methods mitigate the need to make such discrete maps of patches and thus have the potential to broaden the scope for empirical evaluations of the MVT and related theory in humans. Beyond studies of naturalistic foraging in humans and other animals, our approach has implications for optimization of search behavior in a range of applied fields where search dynamics must be adapted to shifting patterns of environmental heterogeneity affecting prey density and patchiness.
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