Unpacking chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) patch use: Do individuals respond to food patches as predicted by the marginal value theorem?

ABSTRACT: The marginal value theorem is an optimal foraging model that predicts how efficient foragers should respond to both their ecological and social environments when foraging in food patches, and it has strongly influenced hypotheses for primate behavior. Nevertheless, experimental tests of the marginal value theorem have been rare in primates and observational studies have provided conflicting support. As a step towards filling this gap, we test whether the foraging decisions of captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) adhere to the assumptions and qualitative predictions of the marginal value theorem. We presented 12 adult chimpanzees with a two-patch foraging environment consisting of both low-quality (i.e., low-food density) and high-quality (i.e., high-food density) patches and examined the

SUBMITTER: O'Bryan LR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7962466 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature