Optimal Foraging in Glossophagine Bats: When to Give Up

This paper discusses the foraging strategy of animals whose presence steadily depletes a food resource. In particular, we consider when animals should switch from a patch they are depleting to another patch. We invented "switching rules," computer-simulated foraging bouts under these rules and matched computer distributions of the food in abandoned patches with actual resource depletion by the animals. The optimal switching rule as seen by the computer (that which gives maximum yield of food per animal energy invested) is also the rule which best fits the real distribution of "left-overs" when the patch is abandoned.