Efficient or inaccurate? Analytical and numerical modelling of random search strategies

Abstract

A large number of observational and theoretical studies have investigated animal movement strategies for finding randomly located food items. Many of these studies have claimed that a particular strategy is advantageous over other strategies or that the spatial distribution of the food items affects the search efficiency. Here, we study a deliberately idealised problem, in which a blind forager searches for re-visitable food items. We show analytically that the forager's efficiency is completely independent of both its movement strategy and the spatial pattern of the food items and depends only on the density of food in the environment. However, in some cases, apparent optima in search strategies can arise as artefacts of inappropriate and inaccurate numerical simulations. We discuss modifications to the idealised foraging problem that can confer an advantage on certain strategies, including when the forager has some memory or knowledge of the environment; when the food items are non-revisitable; and when the problem is viewed in an evolutionary context.