Optimal Foraging

Often in life, the things an individual needs may not be within immediate grasp. So, organisms need to forage. Foraging is defined simply as the process of searching for food or more generally resources. Although food is probably the first example that comes to mind, organisms must forage for other resources like shelter or mates and animals often go to great lengths to get what they need. However, the act of foraging itself requires energy. Essentially, individuals must balance burning calories with obtaining them. To put it simply, foraging requires a strategy. Ecologists created the optimal foraging theory to model the circumstances in which an organism meets the optimum balance between energy expended foraging, i.e., two acorn's worth and the potential energy it can acquire like six new acorns.

One characteristic of foraging is that resources are not always spread out evenly within a habitat. More typically, resources are contained in patches that foragers must move between. So how exactly should foragers navigate these patches of resources? In 1976, evolutionary ecologist Eric L. Charnov came up with the marginal value theorem or MVT to explain how organisms optimize their for