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A critical evaluation of the index of patch quality

The inverse optimality approach can allow us to learn about an animal's environment by assuming their behaviour is optimal. This approach has been applied to animals diving underwater for food to produce the index of patch quality (IPQ), which aims to provide a proxy for prey abundance or quali...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Fayet, Annette L., Houston, Alasdair I.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8131121/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34004133
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0459
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author Fayet, Annette L.
Houston, Alasdair I.
author_facet Fayet, Annette L.
Houston, Alasdair I.
author_sort Fayet, Annette L.
collection PubMed
description The inverse optimality approach can allow us to learn about an animal's environment by assuming their behaviour is optimal. This approach has been applied to animals diving underwater for food to produce the index of patch quality (IPQ), which aims to provide a proxy for prey abundance or quality in a foraging patch based on the animal's diving behaviour. The IPQ has been used in several empirical studies but has never been evaluated theoretically. Here, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the IPQ approach from a theoretical angle and review the empirical evidence supporting its use. We highlight several potential issues, in particular with the gain function—the function describing the energetic gain of an animal during a dive—used to calculate the IPQ. We investigate an alternative gain function which is appropriate in some cases, provide a new model based on this function, and discuss differences between the IPQ model and ours. We also find that there is little supporting empirical evidence justifying the general use of the IPQ and suggest future empirical validation methods which could help strengthen the case for the IPQ. Our findings have implications for the field of diving ecology and habitat assessment.
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spelling pubmed-81311212021-05-27 A critical evaluation of the index of patch quality Fayet, Annette L. Houston, Alasdair I. Proc Biol Sci Behaviour The inverse optimality approach can allow us to learn about an animal's environment by assuming their behaviour is optimal. This approach has been applied to animals diving underwater for food to produce the index of patch quality (IPQ), which aims to provide a proxy for prey abundance or quality in a foraging patch based on the animal's diving behaviour. The IPQ has been used in several empirical studies but has never been evaluated theoretically. Here, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the IPQ approach from a theoretical angle and review the empirical evidence supporting its use. We highlight several potential issues, in particular with the gain function—the function describing the energetic gain of an animal during a dive—used to calculate the IPQ. We investigate an alternative gain function which is appropriate in some cases, provide a new model based on this function, and discuss differences between the IPQ model and ours. We also find that there is little supporting empirical evidence justifying the general use of the IPQ and suggest future empirical validation methods which could help strengthen the case for the IPQ. Our findings have implications for the field of diving ecology and habitat assessment. The Royal Society 2021-05-26 2021-05-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8131121/ /pubmed/34004133 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0459 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Behaviour
Fayet, Annette L.
Houston, Alasdair I.
A critical evaluation of the index of patch quality
title A critical evaluation of the index of patch quality
title_full A critical evaluation of the index of patch quality
title_fullStr A critical evaluation of the index of patch quality
title_full_unstemmed A critical evaluation of the index of patch quality
title_short A critical evaluation of the index of patch quality
title_sort critical evaluation of the index of patch quality
topic Behaviour
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8131121/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34004133
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0459
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