Optimal foraging theory (OFT) predicts and evaluates how an organism behaves in response to problems encountered in its environment while searching for food (Commons et al. 1988). Motivated by a growing understanding of natural selection (Williams 1966), and the importance of energy in ecological systems, OFT was first introduced in the 1960s by two publications by MacArthur and Pianka (1966) and Emlen (1966). These seminal papers suggested that organisms’ prey choices were selected for by evolution and guided by a tendency to maximize energy as a function of time spent feeding (Kamil et al. 1987). (Selection in biology is a natural process that results in the survival and reproduction of some organisms and not others with the result that inherited traits of the survivors are passed down to offspring, thereby perpetuating those traits (“Selection,” 2017).) The publication of Stephen and Krebs’ book Foraging Theoryin 1986 further fortified and popularized the theory, inspiring many...
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Ritvo, S. (2022). Optimal Foraging Theory. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55065-7_632
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