Stephens 9802697 "Foraging" is the process of searching for, attacking, and processing food and other resources. Scientists study foraging in several ways: some investigators address the psychological and neural apparatus of resource-seeking behavior; others study the structures and physiology of resource acquisition (for example, mouth pads and digestive processes); still others focus on how foraging influences the structure of ecosystems. This diversity has meant that investigators working at one level, seldom have opportunities to interact with those working at another. This project supports an international conference on foraging behavior that will bring many of these investigators together. The conference, at the University of California at Santa Cruz, will consist of 18 invited presentations selected to represent an array of approaches, and approximately 80 contributed presentations. The conference seeks to promote an improved and better integrated view of foraging behavior. This is both practically and conceptually important. For example, many scientists now feel that a deeper understanding of the brain and nervous system will be a key challenge for the next decade: analysis of animal foraging behavior can provide clues to the types of cognitive problems that neural processes were built to solve. At a different level of biological organization, many critical ecological relationships are, in fact, feeding relationships, and so an improved knowledge of foraging behavior can improve the decisions in the use and management of natural ecosystems.
