information:filtering
Group foraging

Group foraging is when animals find, capture and consume prey in the presence of other individuals. In other words, it is foraging when success depends not only on your own foraging behaviors but the behaviors of others as well. The biological behavior also inspired the development of Artificial Intelligence algorithms that try to follow the main concepts of group foraging by autonomous agents. An important note here is that group foraging can emerge in two types of situations. The first situation is frequently thought of and occurs when foraging in a group is beneficial and brings greater rewards known as an aggregation economy. The second situation occurs when a group of animals forage together but it may not be in an animal's best interest to do so known as a dispersion economy. Think of a cardinal at a bird feeder for the dispersion economy. We might see a group of birds foraging at that bird feeder but it is not in the best interest of the cardinal for any of the other birds to be there too. The amount of food the cardinal can get from that bird feeder depends on how much it can take from the bird feeder but also depends on how much the other birds take as well.