Learning and Foraging: Individuals, Groups, and Populations

Models and experiments investigating the effects of learning on foraging are reviewed. Experiments examining descriptive and optimality models of how animals track temporal changes in their environment are compared. A model investigating the ways in which sampling strategies may be affected when animals forage in a group is discussed, and some predictions from this model are examined in experiments with starlings. A model incorporating individual learning rules and migration costs into a many-patch ideal free distribution examines how the spatial distribution of predators and prey mortality are affected.