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Interference affects food‐finding rate in schooling sticklebacks
Author(s) -
Ranta E.,
Juvonen S.K.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of fish biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1095-8649
pISSN - 0022-1112
DOI - 10.1111/j.1095-8649.1993.tb00437.x
Subject(s) - foraging , biology , fish <actinopterygii> , ecology , fishery
Experiments on sticklebacks seeking for food patches show that foraging in schools enhances food‐finding rate of individuals. A stochastic information‐sharing model characterizes food‐seeking behaviour in which food‐finding by one in a school of fish results in food‐sharing by many. The model predicts the food‐finding rate of a randomly selected individual in a school of n fish to be that of a solitary forager weighted by the inverse of the school size, 1/n. In sticklebacks this seems not to be the case, however. Though the food‐finding rate of individuals in the school reduces with n , the improvement is much slower than predicted by the basic model. We argue that a variant of the information‐sharing model accounting for interference among individuals affecting their food‐seeking behaviour fits the data better.