Life Sciences Commons^™

Self-Organization Of Foraging Behaviour: From Simplicity To Complexity Without Goals, Frederick D. Provenza, Juan J. Villalba, Carl D. Cheney, Scott J. Werner

Behavioral Education for Human, Animal, Vegetation, and Ecosystem Management (BEHAVE)

A herbivore faces challenges while foraging--ongoing changes in its physiological condition along with variation in the nutrient and toxin concentrations of foods, spatially and temporally--that make selecting a nutritious diet a vital affair. Foraging behaviours arise from simple rules that operate across levels of resolution from cells and organs to individuals and their interactions with social and physical environments. At all these levels, behaviour is a function of its consequences: a behaviour operating on the environment to induce changes is itself changed by those events. Thus, behaviour emerges from its own functioningbehaviour self-organizes-not from that of its surroundings. This ostensible …