Ecology for Birdwatchers A Simple Introduction to Optimal Foraging Theory

In this section of Resonance, we invite readers to pose questions likely to be raised in a classroom situation. We may suggest strategies for dealing with them, or invite responses, or both. "Classroom" is equally a forum for raising broader issues and sharing personal experiences and viewpoints on matters related to teaching and learning science. Foraging ecology is an important branch of behavioural ecology with applications in several disciplines, including conservation biology, wildlife management, human behaviour, and aquaculture. Birds, because of their high visibility and often diurnal habits, are extremely popular study species throughout the world. In India, the study of birds has been popular among professional scientists, teachers, as well as amateurs. Here, an attempt is made to introduce some elementary concepts in foraging ecology by taking up some well-known case studies on aquatic birds and focussing on diet models. Birdwatchers are also increasingly participating in citizen science, in which scientific data are crowd-sourced. This article would be useful to this target group in addition to students to gain an understanding of some important ecological concepts.