ABSTRACT
Classical mathematical models in optimal foraging theory have been often criticized by field and experimental biologists because too simple to reproduce the actual behavioural mechanisms of choice used by animals under natural conditions. In fact these models deal with average values of environment (food density, its spatial distribution, ecc.) but do not take into account the short term dynamics in food gathering experienced by an animal during a foraging excursion (see for example the discussion of Owen Smith 1993).
