Searching for wild food resources.
Foraging can involve hiking in the mountains searching for elusive morels, heading out to the local (pesticide-free!) park to pick dandelion greens, or even picking the apples from the branches of your neighbor's tree that hang over into your yard. Foraging most commonly refers to going mushroom hunting, something only people practiced in the fine and delicate art of mushroom identification should engage in. Forage quality is a direct reflection of essential nutrient content and availability to the consuming animal. Three processes define forage quality: an animal’s ability to consume (intake), digest (digestibility), and assimilate (availability) essential nutrients contained within the feed. Blended forage or providing access to browse and forb plants may allow the animals to use their selective feeding behavior to provide a higher quality diet when grass forage quality is marginal. In Oregon, llamas and alpacas enjoyed browsing blackberry leaves. Optimal foraging models attempt to predict the behavior of an animal while it searches for food, a nesting site, or other key niche components. The outcome of the models predicts both how individuals move in the environment and how individuals are distributed in the environment. FORAGING. Foraging is fundamental to the lives of animals. Without food, life is short and unproductive. As in other aspects of their lives, animals employ tacticss and strategies for finding their food. Choice of tactics is driven by the type of food and the defenses it presents Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment where the animal lives. Behavioral ecologists use economic models to understand foraging; many of these models are a type of optimality model. The theory scientists use to understand group foraging is called the Ideal free distribution. This is the null model for thinking about what would draw animals into groups to forage and how they would behave in the process. Best Answer: &nbsp Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment in which the animal lives. Foraging theory considers the foraging behavior of animals in reference to the payoff that an animal obtains from different foraging options. Foraging theory predicts that the foraging options that deliver the highest payoff, should be favored by foraging animals because it will have the highest fitness payoff. c. Central place foraging theory, which describes the behavior of a forager that must return to a particular place in order to consume its food, or perhaps to hoard it or feed it to a mate or offspring. Foraging can also be the gathering of free, but not wild, food from less traditional spots. Parks, abundant fruit trees (with the owners' permission, of course), and public land may not be as picturesque as the forests and meadows we may picture with the foods above, but can be just as abundant. Foraging most commonly refers to going mushroom hunting, something only people practiced in the fine and delicate art of mushroom identification should engage in. Thus foraging theory is discussed in terms of optimizing a payoff from a foraging decision. The payoff for many of these models is the amount of energy an animal receives per unit time, more specifically, the highest ratio of energetic gain to cost while foraging. The theory scientists use to understand group foraging is called the Ideal free distribution. This is the null model for thinking about what would draw animals into groups to forage and how they would behave in the process. The term forage fish refers to small schooling fish that are preyed on by larger aquatic animals. While the term forage has a broad definition, the term forage crop is used to define crops, annual or biennial, which are grown to be utilized by grazing or harvesting as a whole crop. Forage is plant material (mainly plant leaves and stems) eaten by grazing livestock. One measure of learning is 'foraging innovation'—an animal consuming new food, or using a new foraging technique in response to their dynamic living environment. Foraging innovation is considered learning because it involves behavioral plasticity on the animal's part. The theory scientists use to understand group foraging is called the Ideal free distribution. This is the null model for thinking about what would draw animals into groups to forage and how they would behave in the process.
http://localfoods.about.com/od/localfoodsglossary/g/Foraging.htm http://extension.psu.edu/animals/camelids/nutrition/what-is-forage-quality-and-how-does-it-effect-a-feeding-program http://www.animalbehavioronline.com/7.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foraging https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080731021903AAr7c3l http://localfoods.about.com/od/localfoodsglossary/g/Foraging.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foraging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foraging
what is foraging