Foraging efficiency of a predator flock for randomly moving prey: A simulation study

Abstract

Flocking behavior of animals is highly advantageous for taking food resources. The degree of the advantage is related to the ability of flock members to detect their prey and the mobility of prey individuals. In this study, to explore the relation, we constructed a model to simulate a predator flock and its randomly moving prey. The predator members have the prey detection ability, which was characterized as sensing distance, [Formula: see text], and a sensing angle, [Formula: see text]. The mobility of the prey individuals was characterized as the maximum traveling distance of an iteration time step, [Formula: see text]. The relative flock foraging efficiency, [Formula: see text], was defined as [Formula: see text]. [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] represent the spent time for the flock to eat all prey individuals and to uptake the last remaining 10% prey, respectively. Simulation results showed that [Formula: see text] increased, maximized, and decreased with the increase of [Formula: see text], regardless of [Formula: see text]. As the number of prey, [Formula: see text], increased, the tendency of the increasing and decreasing was diluted. The result was briefly discussed in relation to the flock foraging behavior and the development of the model toward applications for real ecosystems.