ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2021
Uncertainty drives deviations in normative foraging decision strategies.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Acetylcholine and noradrenaline enhance foraging optimality in humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Trial
- Foraging models explain human exploration in uncertain tasks.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The Tower Foraging Park: A paradigm for studying cognitive and motor processes underlying behavioral flexibility in freely moving mice.iScience · 2026Article
- Continuous foraging behavior shapes patch-leaving decisions in pigeons: a 3D tracking study.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Stochastic choice drives variability in patch foraging decisions in humans and rats.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Temporal Structure of Reward Availability and Sensory Uncertainty Modulate Allocation Dynamics in Naturalistic Foraging.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Review
- Fair game: urban free-ranging dogs balance resource use and risk aversion at seasonal fairs.Current zoology · 2026Article
- Efficient planning and implementation of optimal foraging strategies under energetic constraints.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Freely foraging macaques value information in ambiguous terrains.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Foraging as an ethological framework for neuroscience.Trends in neurosciences · 2025Review
- Article
- Reward-reset interval timing drives patch foraging decisions through neural state transitions in dorsomedial striatum.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Foraging animals use dynamic Bayesian updating to model meta-uncertainty in environment representations.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Modulation by NPY/NPF-like receptor underlies experience-dependent, sexually dimorphic learning.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Grocery Shopping Under Simplified Marginal Value Theorem Predictions.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- No matter what you do, travel is travel in visual foraging.Vision research · 2024Article
- Probabilistic inference and Bayesian-like estimation in animals: Empirical evidence.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Foraging Under Uncertainty Follows the Marginal Value Theorem with Bayesian Updating of Environment Representations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Effort Foraging Task reveals positive correlation between individual differences in the cost of cognitive and physical effort in humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
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3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Nearly all animals forage to acquire energy for survival through efficient search and resource harvesting. Patch exploitation is a canonical foraging behaviour, but there is a need for more tractable and understandable mathematical models describing how foragers deal with uncertainty. To provide such a treatment, we develop a normative theory of patch foraging decisions, proposing mechanisms by which foraging behaviours emerge in the face of uncertainty. Our model foragers statistically and sequentially infer patch resource yields using Bayesian updating based on their resource encounter history. A decision to leave a patch is triggered when the certainty of the patch type or the estimated yield of the patch falls below a threshold. The time scale over which uncertainty in resource availability persists strongly impacts behavioural variables like patch residence times and decision rules determining patch departures. When patch depletion is slow, as in habitat selection, departures are characterized by a reduction of uncertainty, suggesting that the forager resides in a low-yielding patch. Uncertainty leads patch-exploiting foragers to overharvest (underharvest) patches with initially low (high) resource yields in comparison with predictions of the marginal value theorem. These results extend optimal foraging theory and motivate a variety of behavioural experiments investigating patch foraging behaviour.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.