title: Scale-free foraging by primates emerges from their interaction with a complex environment.
abstract: Scale-free foraging patterns are widespread among animals. These may be the outcome of an optimal searching strategy to find scarce, randomly distributed resources, but a less explored alternative is that this behaviour may result from the interaction of foraging animals with a particular distribution of resources. We introduce a simple foraging model where individual primates follow mental maps and choose their displacements according to a maximum efficiency criterion, in a spatially disordered environment containing many trees with a heterogeneous size distribution. We show that a particular tree-size frequency distribution induces non-Gaussian movement patterns with multiple spatial scales (Lévy walks). These results are consistent with field observations of tree-size variation and spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi) foraging patterns. We discuss the consequences that our results may have for the patterns of seed dispersal by foraging primates.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Sistemas Complejos, Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México DF.
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Boyer
authors.forename: Gabriel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ramos-Fernández
authors.forename: Octavio
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Miramontes
authors.forename: José L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Mateos
authors.forename: Germinal
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Cocho
authors.forename: Hernán
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Larralde
authors.forename: Humberto
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ramos
authors.forename: Fernando
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rojas
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002427:Cebidae / Q000502:physiology*; D017753:Ecosystem; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D006702:Homing Behavior; D008954:Models, Biological; D011323:Primates / Q000502:physiology