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J Exp Biol 2020 02 3;223(Pt 3). Epub 2020 Feb 3.

Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.

Solitary foraging ants rely on vision when travelling along routes and when pinpointing their nest. We tethered foragers of on a trackball and recorded their intended movements when the trackball was located on their normal foraging corridor (on-route), above their nest and at a location several metres away where they have never been before (off-route). We found that at on- and off-route locations, most ants walk in the nest or foraging direction and continue to do so for tens of metres in a straight line. Read More

Am J Phys Anthropol 2019 12 10;170(4):622-628. Epub 2019 Oct 10.

Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Ecologia i Ciencies Ambientals, Secció Zoologia i Antropologia Biològica, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.

Objectives: Central African small-scale foragers subsist primarily on hunting game activities and wild plant-food gathering. Starch-rich tubers are underground storage organs (USOs) and staple food resources in savanna and tropical rainforests. However, little is known about the effect of USO consumption on tooth wear development in living hunter-gatherers. Read More

BMC Ecol 2019 09 11;19(1):36. Epub 2019 Sep 11.

Mammal Research Institute, Department of Zoology & Entomology, University of Pretoria, Private Bag X20, Hatfield, Pretoria, 0028, South Africa.

Background: To understand and predict the distribution of foragers, it is crucial to identify the factors that affect individual movement decisions at different scales. Individuals are expected to adjust their foraging movements to the hierarchical spatial distribution of resources. At a small local scale, spatial segregation in foraging habitat happens among individuals of closely situated colonies. Read More

J Hum Evol 2019 10 23;135:102646. Epub 2019 Aug 23.

Department of Anthropology, University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK 74104, USA.

The Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) temporally overlaps with the range expansion of Homo sapiens populations in various parts of Eurasia and is often considered a key archaeological phase for investigating behavioral changes from the Middle Paleolithic. This paper reports upon new data from IUP occupations at Wadi Aghar, a rock shelter site in the southern Levant. In combining the results of radiometric dates and lithic analyses, we clarify the chronological and cultural position of Wadi Aghar assemblages in the Levantine IUP. Read More

J Anim Ecol 2019 08 24;88(8):1158-1167. Epub 2019 May 24.

Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Individual pollinators that specialize on one plant species within a foraging bout transfer more conspecific and less heterospecific pollen, positively affecting plant reproduction. However, we know much less about pollinator specialization at the scale of a foraging bout compared to specialization by pollinator species. In this study, we measured the diversity of pollen carried by individual bees foraging in forest plant communities in the mid-Atlantic United States. Read More

Am J Phys Anthropol 2019 05 19;169(1):143-151. Epub 2019 Feb 19.

Department of Anthropology, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania.

Objectives: In Lambert and Welker (2017) we explored the association between subsistence economy and postcranial fracture prevalence, finding that low-intensity agriculturalists exhibited significantly lower fracture rates than foragers or high-intensity agriculturalists. Here, we explore the impacts of sampling strategy on fracture rates in a sample of high-intensity agriculturalists from the Moche Valley, Peru, and further test the hypothesis that postcranial fracture risks are higher for intensive agriculture.

Materials And Methods: The long bones and clavicles of 102 individuals from an Early Intermediate Period cemetery (400 B. Read More

J Anim Ecol 2019 02 2;88(2):236-246. Epub 2018 Nov 2.

School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.

Animals must effectively balance the time they spend exploring the environment for new resources and exploiting them. One way that social animals accomplish this balance is by allocating these two tasks to different individuals. In honeybees, foraging is divided between scouts, which tend to explore the landscape for novel resources, and recruits, which tend to exploit these resources. Read More

Ecol Evol 2017 03 19;7(6):1898-1908. Epub 2017 Feb 19.

Centre for Environmental and Climate Research Lund University Lund Sweden.

Modeling pollination ecosystem services requires a spatially explicit, process-based approach because they depend on both the behavioral responses of pollinators to the amount and spatial arrangement of habitat and on the within- and between-season dynamics of pollinator populations in response to land use. We describe a novel pollinator model predicting flower visitation rates by wild central-place foragers (e.g. Read More

Anim Cogn 2016 May 4;19(3):543-53. Epub 2016 Feb 4.

Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience and Behavior, Mount Holyoke College, 50 College Street, South Hadley, MA, 01075-1462, USA.

Cataglyphis cursor worker ants are capable of highly sophisticated rescue behaviour in which individuals are able to identify what has trapped a nestmate and to direct their behaviour towards that obstacle. Nonetheless, rescue behaviour is constrained by workers' subcaste: whereas foragers, the oldest workers, are able both to give and to receive the most help, the youngest workers, inactives, neither give nor receive any help whatsoever; nurses give and receive intermediate levels of aid, reflecting their intermediate age. Such differences in rescue behaviour across subcastes suggest that age and experience play a critical role. Read More

PLoS One 2015 26;10(6):e0131725. Epub 2015 Jun 26.

Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Understanding the signals used by plants to attract seed disperses is a pervasive quest in evolutionary and sensory biology. Fruit size, colour, and odour variation have long been discussed in the controversial context of dispersal syndromes targeting olfactory-oriented versus visually-oriented foragers. Trade-offs in signal investment could impose important physiological constraints on plants, yet have been largely ignored. Read More

Homo 2015 Aug 5;66(4):299-315. Epub 2015 May 5.

Secció Antropologia, Departament de Biologia Animal, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028, Spain. Electronic address:

Apart from reflecting modern human dental variation, differences in dental size among populations provide a means for studying continuous evolutionary processes and their mechanisms. Dental wear, on the other hand, has been widely used to infer dietary adaptations and variability among or within diverse ancient human populations. Few such studies have focused on modern foragers and farmers, however, and diverse methods have been used. Read More

Biol Lett 2013 9;9(6):20130528. Epub 2013 Oct 9.

Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Montreal, , PO Box 5000, Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada , J2S 7C6.

Foraging in groups provides many benefits that are not necessarily experienced the same way by all individuals. I explore the possibility that foraging mode, the way individuals exploit resources, varies as a function of spatial position in the group, reflecting commonly occurring spatial differences in predation risk. I show that semipalmated sandpipers (Calidris pusilla), a social foraging avian species, tended to adopt a riskier foraging mode in the central, more protected areas of their groups. Read More

Am J Phys Anthropol 2013 Oct 31;152(2):230-8. Epub 2013 Aug 31.

Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, 28403-5907.

This study reconstructs linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) prevalence and stress episode duration among Jomon period foragers from Hokkaido, Japan (HKJ). Results are compared to Jomon period samples from coastal Honshu, Japan (HSJ) and Tigara Inupiat from Point Hope, Alaska (PHT) to provide a more comprehensive perspective on the manifestation of stress among circum-Pacific foragers. LEH were identified macro- and microscopically by enamel surface depressions and increased perikymata spacing within defects. Read More

Insects 2012 Dec 20;4(1):9-30. Epub 2012 Dec 20.

School of Life Sciences, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA.

Honey bees move through a series of in-hive tasks (e.g., "nursing") to outside tasks (e. Read More

Int J Paleopathol 2011 Oct 23;1(2):89-97. Epub 2011 Sep 23.

Center for Bioarchaeological Research, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, AZ 85287, United States.

There are limited data on the health effects of the transition to food production in North Africa where Middle Holocene peoples adopted pastoralism to mitigate a deteriorating climate. Unlike other areas of domestication the advent of food production throughout the Sahara, and much of Africa, was decoupled from increasing sedentism and population aggregation. Here, we consider the effects of this dietary transition on early childhood health by examining localized hypoplasia of the primary canine (LHPC). Read More

Am J Phys Anthropol 2011 Sep;146(1):104-15

Department of Anthropology, University of West Bohemia, 306 14 Pilsen, Czech Republic.

On the basis of new examination of ancient DNA and craniometric analyses, Neolithic dispersal in Central Europe has been recently explained as reflecting colonization or at least a major influx of near eastern farmers. Given the fact that Neolithic dispersal in Central Europe was very rapid and extended into a large area, colonization would have to be associated with high population growth and fertility rates of an expanding Neolithic population. We built three demographic models to test whether the growth and fertility rates of Neolithic farmers were high enough to allow them to colonize Central Europe without admixture with foragers. Read More

Physiol Behav 2010 May 13;100(2):122-7. Epub 2010 Feb 13.

Departamento de Ciencia y Tecnología Agroforestal y Genética, ETSIA, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 02071 Albacete, Spain.

Foraging theory predicts that animals should be able to assess nutrient content of food sources and adjust their diet according to needs. As many minerals are essential nutrients, animals should be able to discriminate and consume the amount needed for each mineral. Although this has been proved for sodium and phosphorus, it is not clear if animals can discriminate among other essential minerals, and if they do so based on physiological needs. Read More

Oecologia 1999 Jun;119(4):578-585

Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, Earth and Marine Sciences Building, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA e-mail: Tel.: +1-831-4594089, , , , , , US.

We investigated the impact of foraging location (nearshore vs offshore) and foraging latitude (high vs middle) on the carbon (δC) and nitrogen (δN) isotope compositions of bone collagen of northern fur seals (Callorhinus ursinus), harbor seals (Phoca vitulina), California sea lions (Zalophus californianus), and northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris). Nearshore-foraging harbor seals from California had δC values 2.0‰ higher than female northern elephant seals foraging offshore at similar latitudes. Read More