Differential patch-leaving behavior during probabilistic foraging in humans and gerbils.

Autor: Güldener L; Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Otto-von-Guericke-University, 39106, Magdeburg, Germany. lasse.gueldener@ovgu.de., Saravanakumar P; Department of Systems Physiology of Learning, Leibniz-Institute for Neurobiology, 39118, Magdeburg, Germany., Happel MFK; Department of Systems Physiology of Learning, Leibniz-Institute for Neurobiology, 39118, Magdeburg, Germany.; Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, 39106, Magdeburg, Germany.; Medical School Berlin, Faculty for Medicine, 14197, Berlin, Germany., Ohl FW; Department of Systems Physiology of Learning, Leibniz-Institute for Neurobiology, 39118, Magdeburg, Germany.; Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, 39106, Magdeburg, Germany.; Institute of Biology, Otto-von-Guericke-University, 39106, Magdeburg, Germany., Vollmer M; Department of Systems Physiology of Learning, Leibniz-Institute for Neurobiology, 39118, Magdeburg, Germany.; Department of Experimental Audiology, Otto-von-Guericke-University, 39120, Magdeburg, Germany.; University Clinic of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Otto-von-Guericke-University, 39120, Magdeburg, Germany., Pollmann S; Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, Otto-von-Guericke-University, 39106, Magdeburg, Germany.; Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, 39106, Magdeburg, Germany.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Communications biology [Commun Biol] 2024 Aug 15; Vol. 7 (1), pp. 1000. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Aug 15.
DOI: 10.1038/s42003-024-06683-8
Abstrakt: Foraging confronts animals, including humans, with the need to balance exploration and exploitation: exploiting a resource until it depletes and then deciding when to move to a new location for more resources. Research across various species has identified rules for when to leave a depleting patch, influenced by environmental factors like patch quality. Here we compare human and gerbil patch-leaving behavior through two analogous tasks: a visual search for humans and a physical foraging task for gerbils, both involving patches with randomly varying initial rewards that decreased exponentially. Patch-leaving decisions of humans but not gerbils follow an incremental mechanism based on reward encounters that is considered optimal for maximizing reward yields in variable foraging environments. The two species also differ in their giving-up times, and some human subjects tend to overharvest. However, gerbils and individual humans who do not overharvest are equally sensitive to declining collection rates in accordance with the marginal value theorem. Altogether this study introduces a paradigm for a between-species comparison on how to resolve the exploitation-exploration dilemma.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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