How Smart Should a Forager Be?

Abstract

We introduce an idealized model of an intelligent forager in which higher intelligence corresponds to a larger spatial range over which the forager can detect food. Such a forager diffuses randomly whenever the nearest food is more distant than the forager's detection range, $R$, and moves ballistically towards the nearest food inside its detection range. Concomitantly, the forager's metabolic energy cost per step is an increasing function of its intelligence. A dumb forager wanders randomly and may miss nearby food, thus making it susceptible to starvation. Conversely, a too-smart forager incurs a large metabolic cost per step during its search for food and is again susceptible to starvation. We show that the forager's lifetime is maximized at an optimal, intermediate level of intelligence.

arXiv comment12 pages, 5 figures, IOP format

References in corpus (6)

• Persistence and First-Passage Properties in Non-equilibrium Systems
• Depletion-Controlled Starvation of a Diffusing Forager
• Role of Depletion on the Dynamics of a Diffusing Forager
• Does Greed Help a Forager Survive?
• Starvation Dynamics of a Greedy Forager
• Impact of food distribution on lifetime of a forager with or without sense of smell

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Semantic Information in a model of Resource Gathering Agents
• Efficiency of random search with space-dependent diffusivity
• Random search with resetting in heterogeneous environments
• Information-theoretic description of a feedback-control Kuramoto model
• Random-search efficiency in a bounded interval with spatially heterogeneous diffusion coefficient
• Forager with intermittent rest: Better for survival?
• Does Partial Consumption Help Foraging?