Abstract
When foraging, animals can maximize their fitness if they are able to tailor their foraging decisions to current environmental conditions. When making foraging decisions, individuals need to assess the benefits of foraging while accounting for the potential risks of being captured by a predator. However, whether and how different factors interact to shape these decisions is not yet well understood, especially in individual foragers. Here we present a standardized set of manipulative field experiments in the form of foraging assays in the tropical lizard Anolis cristatellus in Puerto Rico. We presented male lizards with foraging opportunities to test how the presence of conspecifics, predation-risk perception, the abundance of food, and interactions among these factors determines the outcome of foraging decisions. In Experiment 1, anoles foraged faster when food was scarce and other conspecifics were present near the feeding tray, while they took longer to feed when food was abundant and when no conspecifics were present. These results suggest that foraging decisions in anoles are the result of a complex process in which individuals assess predation risk by using information from conspecific individuals while taking into account food abundance. In Experiment 2, a simulated increase in predation risk (i.e., distance to the feeding tray) confirmed the relevance of risk perception by showing that the use of available perches is strongly correlated with the latency to feed. We found Puerto Rican crested anoles integrate instantaneous ecological information about food abundance, conspecific activity and predation risk, and adjust their foraging behavior accordingly.
Highlights
Animals increase their chance of survival and reproduction in the wild by successfully responding to the ecological challenges they encounter
We incorporated observational data on the presence of conspecifics interacting with the feeding tray to understand if their presence altered foraging decisions of focal individuals
The latency to feed from the experimental tray increased with the number of mealworms presented (Effect size (η2p) = 0.217; p < 0.01) and the presence of conspecifics interacting with the feeding tray (Effect size (η2p) = 0.051; p < 0.003)
Summary
Animals increase their chance of survival and reproduction in the wild by successfully responding to the ecological challenges they encounter These responses are often shaped by decisionmaking processes, in which animals integrate information to produce behavioral responses that maximize their fitness. Foraging Decision-Making in a Tropical Lizard research has shown the complexity of such decision-making processes by investigating the fitness consequences of foraging decisions and predicting those decisions as a function of both ecological and social conditions [7,8,9] This is because foraging decisions depend on intrinsic factors such as physiology, body condition, cognitive abilities, sex, ontogeny, or variation in animal personalities, and on extrinsic factors like the type or availability of food, structural habitat, and other environmental characteristics (S1 Fig). When assessing the costs and benefits of any foraging decision in their local environment, animals need to anticipate the decisions of both potentially competing conspecifics and predators [7,10,11]
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