If conditions change quickly, the animal can get enough food by only going out into the open when times are good, and resting otherwise. But if harsh conditions persist, the animal has to find food during those times as well.
In the natural world, searching for food is a high-stakes game in which animals risk starving to death or being killed by a predator. New research from the University of Bristol shows that to stay alive in a changing environment, animals must carefully time when they go out looking for food and when they hide from predators. Animals must go out into the open and look for food to avoid starvation, but in doing so they expose themselves to the risk of predation. The Bristol team, led by research associate Andrew Higginson , built a computer model to predict how animals should manage these risks when the environmental conditions change over time. In the model, sometimes conditions were good, with plentiful food or few predators, and sometimes they were bad, with little food or many predators. The results of the study, published in The American Naturalist, show that the critical factor affecting survival is how long the good and bad periods last. "If conditions change quickly, the animal can get enough food by only going out into the open when times are good, and resting otherwise" Higginson explained.
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