Ardea
Official journal of the Netherlands Ornithologists' Union

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Krebs J.R. (1980) Optimal foraging, predation risk and territory defence. ARDEA 68 (1-4): 83-90
Optimal foraging models can be extended to include tradeoffs competing activities. I describe two examples in which Great Tits apparently reach a compromise between maximising rate of food intake and vigilance for predators or vigilance for territorial intrusions. The results of the experiments are qualitatively as expected from optimality considerations but it is necessary to calibrate feeding benefit against risk from predation or territorial intrusion before quantitative predictions can be made. I discuss ways of obtaining such a calibration.


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