Crossword clues for foraging
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Forage \For"age\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Foraged; p. pr. & vb. n. Foraging.] To wander or rove in search of food; to collect food, esp. forage, for horses and cattle by feeding on or stripping the country; to ravage; to feed on spoil.
His most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling to behold his lion's whelp
Forage in blood of French nobility.
--Shak.
Foraging ant (Zo["o]l.), one of several species of ants of the genus Eciton, very abundant in tropical America, remarkable for marching in vast armies in search of food.
Foraging cap, a forage cap.
Foraging party, a party sent out after forage.
Wiktionary
n. The act of searching for food. vb. (present participle of forage English)
WordNet
n. the act of searching for food and provisions [syn: forage]
Wikipedia
Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment where the animal lives.
Behavioral ecologists use economic models to understand foraging; many of these models are a type of optimality model. Thus foraging theory is discussed in terms of optimizing a payoff from a foraging decision. The payoff for many of these models is the amount of energy an animal receives per unit time, more specifically, the highest ratio of energetic gain to cost while foraging. Foraging theory predicts that the decisions that maximize energy per unit time and thus deliver the highest payoff will be selected for and persist. Key words used to describe foraging behavior include resources, the elements necessary for survival and reproduction which have a limited supply, predator, any organism that consumes others, and prey, an organism that is eaten in part or whole by another.
Behavioral ecologists first tackled this topic in the 1960s and 1970s. Their goal was to quantify and formalize a set of models to test their null hypothesis that animals forage randomly. Important contributions to foraging theory have been made by:
- Eric Charnov, who developed the marginal value theorem to predict the behavior of foragers using patches;
- Sir Kevin Durant, with work on the optimal diet model in relation to tits and chickadees;
- John Goss-Custard, who first tested the optimal diet model against behavior in the field, using redshank, and then proceeded to an extensive study of foraging in the common pied oystercatcher
Usage examples of "foraging".
Purga sensed, deep down, that the day would come when her daughter would see her not as a foraging companion, not even as a hindrance, but as a resource.
The foraging crowd seemed a little less dense there, so she headed that way.
So the apes needed to spend much of each day searching for patchy resources, foraging alone or in small groups, collecting together again to sleep in the treetop refuges.
They were the rowdy young males who had loped off not days before on a foraging trip to another part of the forest clump.
They turned away, as if eager to return to their foraging, or eating, or sleeping.
And there was occasional conflict as two parties found themselves competing over a rich foraging ground or the target of a hunt.
The great tide of human intelligence had long withdrawn, but the people had retained a good understanding of the land, its geography, and resources: efficient foraging was an essential skill if you were to find food and water in this desperately arid landscape.
Much vegetation had been nipped by early frost, and storms blew in every other day, roaring across the Pan Woods to rot what little provender remained and force the unicorns to spend full as much time huddling underhill as they did foraging for food.
Janus and his foraging party set out this afternoon for the river valleys, and it may be that we can reassess the situation when they return.
It had not snowed in three days, and the ground was churned in muddy tracks where the Penambrans had been foraging and setting their snares.
White Raiders were taller and longer-limbed than those bred in the Realm of Darwath and, from foraging on the scant saltbush and wiregrass of the desert, they were narrow-built and of prominent vertebrae.
I have been foraging, and have got hold of half a dozen bottles of good wine from the priest.
I must make a wide detour to the east so as to escape British foraging parties.
Austrian general harassed their foraging parties, fell upon different quarters of their army in the night, and kept them in continual alarm.
Itiji ate the provisions they had carried with them and the few fish which the foraging parties had splashed out of the water.