Individuals from animal populations living in the wild face several challenges to maximize their fitness. Within this set of challenges, finding food plays a key-role. For example, the search for food can promote social information exchange, enhancing cooperation between individuals and leading to changes in species’ecology. Ultimately, the essence of life has been described as the ability to “capture energy from the environment and convert it into more organisms”. However, the search for such energy (i.e food resources) is complicated by a vast set of elements, such as inter- and intra-specific interactions (e.g. competition, predation), luck, and environmental conditions. Aim of our work is to disentangle and investigate in depth the relation between foraging behaviour and the set of intrinsic/extrinsic factors affecting foraging decisions in colonial birds.
FORAGING ECOLOGY
