State‐dependent Bayesian foraging on spatially autocorrelated food distributions

Abstract

When prey are cryptic and are distributed in discrete clumps (patches), Bayesian foragers revise their prior expectation about a patch's prey density by using their foraging success in the patch as a source of information. Prey densities are often spatially autocorrelated, meaning that rich patches are often surrounded by other rich patches, while poor patches are often in the midst of other poor patches. In that case, foraging success is informative about prey densities in the current patch and in the surrounding patches. In a spatially explicit environment where prey are cryptic and their densities autocorrelated, I modelled two types of Bayesian foragers that aim to maximize their survival rate: (1) the spatially ignorant forager which does not take account of the spatial structure in its food supply and (2) the spatially informed forager which does take this into account. Not surprisingly, the spatially informed forager has a higher survivorship than the spatially ignorant forager, simply because it is able to obtain more reliable prey density estimates than the spatially ignorant forager. Surprisingly though, the emerging policy used by the spatially informed forager is to leave patches at a lower (expected) giving‐up density (GUD) the further away from its latest prey capture. This is because this forager is willing to wait for good news: a prey capture far from the latest prey capture drastically changes the forager's expectations about prey densities in the patches that it will exploit in the near future, whereas a prey capture near its latest prey capture hardly affects these expectations. Thus, by sacrificing current intake rate for information gain, the spatially informed forager ultimately maximizes its long‐term pay‐off. Finally, as the value of food is less the more energy is stored, both types make state‐dependent giving‐up decisions: the higher their energy store levels, the higher their GUDs.