Using insights from OFT, individuals' actual decisions to select or ignore information resources can be related to characteristics of particular resources and to features of the bibliographic microhabitats in which they forage. The OFT prey-choice model predicts the composition of a forager's diet and the circumstances causing resources to be added or deleted. Searching involves the time a forager searches for all potential prey types before encountering the preferred prey. Handling begins with the forager's decision to pursue, and involves the time required to capture, process and consume one item of a given prey type. For the scholar, these resources would include the range of authors or colleagues and the ir ideas and works consumed for the purpose of sustaining one's research and publishing career.
Analysts plot time costs per unit harvest along the y-axis.
Adding one more resource type increases handling costs but lowers searching costs, as more types are judged acceptable. An improvement in foragers' skills or technology also lowers searching costs. The intersection of searching and handling cost curves describes the upper limit of resource types in the optimal diet. Specialism or generalism describes a forager's variability of feeding behavior and number of distinct resource types consumed. With many high-ranking resources available, foragers tend to have narrow diets, that is, they are specialists who pass by resources in favor of a few choice items.