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Risk-sensitive Foraging Models
Risk-sensitive foraging models help to explain the variance in foraging behaviour in animals. This model allows powerful predictions to be made about expected foraging behaviour for individual groups of animals. Risk sensitive foraging is based on experimental evidence that the net energy budget level of an animal is predictive of type of foraging activity an animal will employ. Experimental evidence has indicated that individuals will change the type of foraging strategy that they use depending on environmental conditions and ability to meet net energy levels. When individuals can meet net energy level requirements by accessing food in risk aversive methods they do so. However, when net energy level requirements are not met by employing risk aversive methods, individuals are more likely to take risk prone actions in order to meet their net energy requirements. Caraco’s experiment (Juncos) Thomas Caraco and his colleagues in 1980 were amongst the first to study risk sensitive for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foraging
Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's Fitness (biology), fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Optimal foraging theory, Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment where the animal lives. Behavioral ecologists use economic models and categories to understand foraging; many of these models are a type of optimal model. Thus foraging theory is discussed in terms of optimizing a payoff from a foraging decision. The payoff for many of these models is the amount of energy an animal receives per unit time, more specifically, the highest ratio of energetic gain to cost while foraging. Foraging theory predicts that the decisions that maximize energy per unit time and thus deliver the highest payoff will be selected for and persist. Key words used to describe foraging behavior include ''resources'', the elements necessary fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yellow-eyed Junco
The yellow-eyed junco (''Junco phaeonotus'') is a species of junco, a group of small New World sparrows. Its range is primarily in Mexico, extending into some of the mountains of the southern tips of the U.S. states of Arizona and New Mexico. It is not generally migratory, but sometimes moves to nearby lower elevations during winter. The female lays three to five pale gray or bluish-white eggs in an open nest of dried grass two to three times a year. Incubation takes 15 days, and when hatched, the chicks are ready to leave the nest two weeks later. This bird's diet consists mainly of seeds, berries and insects. Taxonomy The yellow-eyed junco was formally described in 1831 by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler from a specimen collected in Mexico. He introduced a new genus, ''Junco'', and coined the binomial name ''Junco phaeonotus''. The genus name is from Latin ''iuncus'' meaning "rush". The specific epithet combines the Ancient Greek '' phaios'' meaning "dusky" or "bro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dark-eyed Junco
The dark-eyed junco (''Junco hyemalis'') is a species of junco, a group of small, grayish New World sparrows. This bird is common across much of temperate North America and in summer ranges far into the Arctic. It is a very variable species, much like the related fox sparrow (''Passerella iliaca''), and its systematics are still not completely untangled. Taxonomy The dark-eyed junco was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of ''Systema Naturae'' as ''Fringilla hyemalis''. The description consisted merely of the laconic remark "''F ingillanigra, ventre albo.'' ("A black 'finch' with white belly") and a statement that it came from America. Linnaeus based his description on the "Snow-Bird" that Mark Catesby had described and illustrated in his ''The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands''. The Bill of this Bird is white: The Breast and Belly white. All the rest of the Body black; but in some places dusky, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hummingbirds
Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 361 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but the vast majority of the species are found in the tropics around the equator. They are small birds, with most species measuring in length. The smallest extant hummingbird species is the bee hummingbird, which weighs less than . The largest hummingbird species is the giant hummingbird, weighing . They are specialized for feeding on flower nectar, but all species also consume flying insects or spiders. Hummingbirds split from their sister group, the swifts and treeswifts, around 42 million years ago. The common ancestor of extant hummingbirds is estimated to have lived 22 million years ago in South America. They are known as hummingbirds because of the humming sound created by their beating wings, which flap at high frequencies audible to humans. They hover in mid-air at rapid wing-flapping rates, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foraging
Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's Fitness (biology), fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Optimal foraging theory, Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment where the animal lives. Behavioral ecologists use economic models and categories to understand foraging; many of these models are a type of optimal model. Thus foraging theory is discussed in terms of optimizing a payoff from a foraging decision. The payoff for many of these models is the amount of energy an animal receives per unit time, more specifically, the highest ratio of energetic gain to cost while foraging. Foraging theory predicts that the decisions that maximize energy per unit time and thus deliver the highest payoff will be selected for and persist. Key words used to describe foraging behavior include ''resources'', the elements necessary fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eating Behaviors
Eating (also known as consuming) is the ingestion of food, typically to provide a heterotrophic organism with energy and to allow for growth. Animals and other heterotrophs must eat in order to survive — carnivores eat other animals, herbivores eat plants, omnivores consume a mixture of both plant and animal matter, and detritivores eat detritus. Fungi digest organic matter outside their bodies as opposed to animals that digest their food inside their bodies. For humans, eating is an activity of daily living. Some individuals may limit their amount of nutritional intake. This may be a result of a lifestyle choice, due to hunger or famine, as part of a diet or as religious fasting. Eating practices among humans Many homes have a large kitchen area devoted to preparation of meals and food, and may have a dining room, dining hall, or another designated area for eating. Most societies also have restaurants, food courts, and food vendors so that people may eat whe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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