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o What is the optimal foraging theory? How does it apply to plants and animals?

ID: 216934 • Letter: O

Question

o What is the optimal foraging theory? How does it apply to plants and animals? How does it relate to the principle of allocation? o Understand the three-food density and animal response curves. o What is the relationship between the number of predators in an ecosystem and the overall species diversity of that system? o What are strong interactions? How do they affect food web structure? o What are keystone species? Describe the general relationship between biomass and keystones o What are some ways to make studying complex food webs easier? o How can non-native species become keystone species? What are some of the consequences of a particular non-native species on the food web of the site it is introduced to? o Explain how pollution in an ecosystem biosccumulates? What are the consequences of bioaccumulation and biomassitication?

Explanation / Answer

1. Optimal foraging theory is the model used to envisage how an animal behave when they are in search of food as searching involve both energy and time. The animal uses best model so that, they have to invest less energy in searching of food.

Animals used this model for feeding system. In this model, interested organism can be seen as predator and prey system.

In plants, this model is used to find the interaction between pest and prey like potato blight disease.

Since, natural selection favours the individuals those are effective foragers this related the principle of allocation with Optimal foraging theory.