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Scale-free foraging by primates emerges from their interaction with a complex environment

2006; Royal Society; Volume: 273; Issue: 1595 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rspb.2005.3462

1471-2954

Denis Boyer, Gabriel Ramos‐Fernández, Octavio Miramontes, José L. Mateos, G. Cocho, Hernán Larralde, Humberto Fernández Ramos, Fernando Huerta Rojas,

Neural dynamics and brain function

Scale-free foraging patterns are widespread among animals. These may be the outcome of an optimal searching strategy to find scarce, randomly distributed resources, but a less explored alternative is that this behaviour may result from the interaction of foraging animals with a particular distribution of resources. We introduce a simple foraging model where individual primates follow mental maps and choose their displacements according to a maximum efficiency criterion, in a spatially disordered environment containing many trees with a heterogeneous size distribution. We show that a particular tree-size frequency distribution induces non-Gaussian movement patterns with multiple spatial scales (Lévy walks). These results are consistent with field observations of tree-size variation and spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi) foraging patterns. We discuss the consequences that our results may have for the patterns of seed dispersal by foraging primates.