lecture 6 - diet and predation

Question 1

what is the marginal value theorem?

Answer 1

states that animals should determine how long to stay in a patch by predicting the the future value of a resource patch - an animal should leave a resource patch when the rate of payoff falls below the average rate of payoff for the entire area

Question 2

what is the function of a tangent in the marginal value theorem?

Answer 2

To maximise the ratio between resource intake and time spent foraging and travelling

Question 3

definition of ideal free distribution

Answer 3

a way in which animals distribute themselves among several patches of resources - the number of individual animals that aggregate in various patches should be proportional to the amount of resources available in each

Question 4

what does ideal - free refer to?

Answer 4

an animal that is free to move between patches under ideal conditions with no constraints on movement

Question 5

what is a keystone species?

Answer 5

a species whose impact is disproportionally large relative to its abundance

Question 6

what is the meaning of connectance in a food web?

Answer 6

the fraction of all possible pairs of species that interact directly with one another