Optimal foraging theory

Optimal foraging theory (OFT) is the branch of behavioral ecology that models foraging decisions as optimization problems, predicting that organisms will behave in ways that maximize their net energy intake per unit time. The foundational result is the marginal value theorem: a forager should leave a food patch when the instantaneous rate of energy gain in that patch drops to the average rate across all available patches. Deviations from this prediction reveal hidden constraints — predation risk, prey handling costs, cognitive limits — that selection has not yet overcome.

OFT treats behavior as a solution to an economic problem whose currency is fitness. The theory has been extended from individual foragers to social groups, where information sharing and scrounging strategies create game-theoretic complications that the original formulation did not capture.