Abstract
Lady beetle larvae preying upon aphids have to search for their patchily distributed prey on plants, a complicated three-dimensional world. In an attempt to understand the structure of their search path on a single plant it is compared to a path which solves their search problems in the best possible way. The part of the plant where the larva starts searching, the sequence in which the larva searches from top to bottom on additional leaves, and the intensity with which the larva searches on different leaves before it leaves the plant corresponds well to the rules for an optimal search.
Animals searching so effectively must remember the places where they have searched already before. Lady beetle larvae solve this problem probably by recognizing a marker which they deposit during their search.
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Hoffmann, G. (1990). How to Describe the Search of a Predator for Patchily Distributed Prey?. In: Alt, W., Hoffmann, G. (eds) Biological Motion. Lecture Notes in Biomathematics, vol 89. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-51664-1_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-51664-1_24
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