Construct · 3 fields · 4 citations

Where does foraging collide?

One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.

● jingle · one word, three constructs Nearest construct by meaningexploration and exploitationcompare the meanings
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Every construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to foraging is exploration and exploitation.

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foraging3 CONSTRUCTSAnimal foragingCHARNOV · MARGINAL VALUEInformation foragingPIROLLI · INFO SCENTForaging societyKELLY · FORAGING MODE

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1966Animal foraging1999Information foraging2013Foraging society
2026

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Behavioral ecology

How animals search for food

The behaviour by which an animal searches for, chooses, and acquires food, studied as a problem of getting the most energy for the least time and effort. MacArthur and Pianka's 1966 On optimal use of a patchy environment framed the animal as an economic decider choosing which prey to take and which food patches to use, and Charnov's 1976 Optimal foraging, the marginal value theorem derived when a forager should quit a depleting patch and move on. The referent is the feeding behaviour of a real organism, modelled with energy and time, and it is not a way of hunting for information at a screen or a whole mode of human society.[1][2]

Unit
One animal's feeding decision, scored as energy gained per unit time
Recovery means
A depleted food patch refills over time as prey or plants regrow, which is what sets the value of leaving it
Measured by
Observed as diet choice and time spent per patch, and tested against the intake rate predicted by an optimal foraging model

Human-computer interaction

How people hunt for information

A theory that people seeking information behave the way animals foraging for food do, following cues toward richer sources and abandoning a source when the payoff drops. Pirolli and Card's 1999 Information foraging borrowed the mathematics of optimal foraging and added the idea of information scent, the reader's judgement, from snippets and links, of where a valuable body of information lies and when to leave it. The referent is the deliberate behaviour of a person navigating documents, pages, or search results, described by analogy to feeding, and it is not the literal feeding of an animal or a form of human subsistence.[3]

Unit
One person's search decision, scored as useful information gained per unit effort
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Traced through clicks, dwell time, and navigation paths, and modelled by the information scent that guides each move

Anthropology

A way of making a living from the wild

A whole mode of subsistence in which a human group lives by gathering wild plants and hunting or fishing wild animals, rather than by farming or herding, and the term also names the societies organised around it. Kelly's 2013 The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum synthesised how such peoples vary in mobility, group size, sharing, and land use across environments. The referent is a form of human economy and social organisation spanning most of our species' history, described by ethnographers and archaeologists, and it is not one animal's feeding decision or a metaphor for searching a database.[4]

Unit
A human group living by hunting and gathering rather than farming
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Documented by ethnographic fieldwork on diet, mobility, and sharing, and inferred for the past from archaeological remains

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Nearby collisions

exploration and exploitation3 fields · 4 citationsjingle · search vs refine, three fieldsanalogy4 fields · 4 citationsjingle · one word, four constructsbody2 fields · 3 citationsjingle · one word, two constructs

References

  1. MacArthur, R. H., & Pianka, E. R. (1966). On optimal use of a patchy environment. The American Naturalist, 100(916), 603–609. https://doi.org/10.1086/282454
  2. Charnov, E. L. (1976). Optimal foraging, the marginal value theorem. Theoretical Population Biology, 9(2), 129–136. https://doi.org/10.1016/0040-5809(76)90040-X
  3. Pirolli, P., & Card, S. (1999). Information foraging. Psychological Review, 106(4), 643–675. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.106.4.643
  4. Kelly, R. L. (2013). The lifeways of hunter-gatherers: The foraging spectrum. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139176132

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