Abstract
Individuals in a foraging group obeying information sharing make use of knowledge of food-patch locations found by others. A patch found by one will also be exploited by other members in the group. We are interested in the accumulation of gain of the individual finding the patch, the finder. Finding a patch of prey can lead to asymmetries in foraging success when finders get a larger share of the patch than others. Using renewal processes we have modelled this finder's advantage in gain accumulation and derived expectation and variance of gain. Not surprisingly, the longer the finder's privileged time in exploitation of the food patch, the more its gain resembles that of a solitary forager, while with short finder's time finder's gain is close to that of another non-finding group member. Consider, however, that patch-finding ability might be linked with individual characteristics, some being better finders (producers) than others. If producers are foraging among less skilled finders (scroungers), both the within-patch and between-patch components of gain variance are larger for the producers than if they foraged in a group of individuals of equal patch-finding ability. So, if the foragers are risk-averse, the expectation is for patch-finding skill assorted foraging groups.
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