BAYESIAN AND PRESCIENT ASSESSMENT - FORAGING WITH PREHARVEST INFORMATION

Pre-harvest information is information that foragers can obtain about patch quality before exploitation. It may be used by Bayesian foragers, which have knowledge of the distribution of resources in the environment, or prescient foragers, which have sensory information or memory of patches that are spatially and temporally predictable in quality. Prescience leads to higher energy intake rates and should be used if the appropriate information is available. Patch assessment was investigated in Inca doves, Columbina inca, feeding in artificial resource patches to determine the kinds of information doves are capable of using to assess the quality of resource patches. As expected, doves exploited patches in a manner consistent with prescient foraging when patch quality was temporally predictable. The same individuals exploited patches in a manner consistent with Bayesian foraging when prescient foraging would not be likely because patch quality was temporally unpredictable. © 1991 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.