The functional basis of frequency-dependent food selection
1984
GREENWOOD, JEREMY J.D.
Various animals have been observed to select food in a way that changes according to the relative frequency of the different foods available. Sometimes only the strength of selection varies, its direction remaining constant, but sometimes the direction of selection also changes. Selection of a food may be more intense as that food becomes rarer, or vice versa. I discuss here the situations in which animals, particularly predators, may maximize their feeding efficiency by behaving in ways that result in frequency-dependent selection of their food. These include cases in which different types of prey occupy different ecological niches, those in which there are benefits or costs to mixed diets for the predator, those in which rarer types of prey provide easier targets, those in which the different types of prey provide unequal benefits to the animal eating them, those in which direct comparison of the benefits is possible, those in which sampling is necessary because the benefits are unknown, and Batesian and other mimicries. Frequency-dependent selection of food is likely to be common and widespread: to assume frequency independence, without testing, may often be misleading.
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