In a patchy habitat what is the best, or optimal, strategy for feeding. By feeding as a hummingbird in patchy habitats, you will learn about optimal foraging theory and its more general application to many types of behaviour in nature, including human behaviour. It costs you both to search for food in a patch, and to travel between patches. Your goal is to obtain enough energy from the environment to survive, and to maximize your energy gain. Play the game several times, using different strategies and comparing their effectiveness.
Environments differ and with it the costs and benefits of foraging.
Depending on the environment, one strategy may do better than another. Now you will change the patch environment and use the game to derive an empirical solution to the problem of maximizing the net rate of energy gain. Optimal Foraging Theory Provided the costs and benefits of a behaviour in a particular environment are known, then mathematical theory can be developed which should be able to predict the optimal strategy. Here you will be introduced to the theory of optimal foraging and examine some experiments designed to test specific predictions of the theory. All rights reserved.