Foraging in groups of water striders (Gerris remigis): effects of variability in prey arrivals and handling times

Summary In many species, socially subordinate individuals frequently remain in a group despite their lower priority of access to food and mates. This is expected to occur when the net benefits of staying in the group exceed those of a solitary existence. Analogously, territorial foragers surrounded by conspecific competitors are faced with tradeoffs as to patch tenacity. In either case, spatio-temporal variability in resource availability directly affects behavioral patterns and payoffs, particularly of individuals with low priority of access to the resource. However, such individuals may take advantage of natural environmental fluctuations in resource supply in cases where dominants are preoccupied. This arises regularly if two resource items cannot be handled simultaneously and if a second item arrives before handling of the first has been completed. I advance a heuristic model that predicts that foraging or mating success of individuals with low priority of access to resources may increase both with higher variance in inter-arrival times of the resource (given the same mean) and with an increase in the average handling time of the resource. I tested both predictions with two associations of individually marked, naturally foraging water striders (Gerris remigis) in the field. In natural streams individual water striders tend to occupy consistent positions that they may defend, resulting in priority of access to prey items floating downstream for individuals further up front. I manipulated the variance in prey inter-arrival times given the same mean, and the prey handling times by offering larger prey. The outcome was in qualitative agreement with the predictions of the model.