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Deep-sea foraging pathways: an analysis of randomness and resource exploitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Jennifer A. Kitchell
Jennifer A. Kitchell*
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706
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Abstract

The foraging paradigm of trace fossil theory has historically accorded random behavior to non-food-limited deposit-feeders and non-random behavior to food-limited feeders. A series of randomness measures derived from empirical modeling, simulation modeling, stochastic modeling and probability theory applied to foraging patterns observed in deep-sea bottom photographs from the Arctic and Antarctic yielded a behavioral continuum of increasing non-randomness. A linear regression of trace positions along the continuum to bathymetric data did not substantiate the optimal foraging efficiency-depth dependence model of trace fossil theory, except that all traces exhibited a greater optimization than that of simulated random foraging. It is hypothesized that optimization as evidenced by non-random foraging strategies represents maximization of the cost/benefit ratio of resource exploitation to risk of predation and that individual foraging patterns reflect an exploration response to the morphometry of a patchily distributed food resource. Differential predation and competition may account for the co-occurrence of random and non-random strategies within the same bathymetric zone.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Spring 1979 , pp. 107 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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References

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