feeding behaviour

Any action of an animal directed toward obtaining nutrients.

Each species evolves methods of searching for, obtaining, and ingesting food for which it can successfully compete. Some species eat only one type of food, others a variety. Among invertebrates food choices are instinctual, while among vertebrates they are learned.

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Introduction

 any action of an animal that is directed toward the procurement of nutrients. The variety of means of procuring food reflects the diversity of foods used and the myriad of animal types.

      The living cell depends on a virtually uninterrupted supply of materials for its metabolism. In multicellular animals the body fluids surrounding each cell are the immediate source of nutrients. The contents of these fluids are kept at a relatively constant level in spite of tolls taken by the cells, primarily by mobilization of nutrients stored in the body; in vertebrates, for example, glucose is stored in the liver, fats in the fat tissues, calcium in the bones. These stores, however, will become exhausted unless the animal takes up nutrients from outside. Movements performed for this purpose are termed feeding behaviour.

Nutritional (nutrition) requirements of higher animals

      Cells use nutrients as fuel for energy production ( catabolism) and as material for processes of maintenance and growth ( anabolism). Multicellular animals derive energy solely from the breakdown of complex organic molecules, mainly carbohydrates and fats. Because the fuel for the maintenance of animal life comes only from other living organisms or their remains, animals are known as heterotrophic organisms. All animal life depends ultimately on the existence of organisms (largely green plants) that can use inorganic sources of energy, of which solar radiation is by far the most important; some microorganisms, however, obtain energy from oxidation of simple inorganic compounds.

      For anabolic purposes, food must provide adequate amounts of all chemical elements needed by the cells. Of the approximately 35 elements now known to occur in animal cells, four (oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen) make up about 95 percent of the cell weight; another nine (calcium, phosphorus, chlorine, sulfur, potassium, sodium, magnesium, iodine, and iron) contribute about 4 percent. All of these elements have indispensable functions. The remaining 20-odd, together constituting less than 1 percent of cell weight, are called trace elements, because they occur in minute quantities. Although some of them may become incorporated into cells by accident, many fulfill vital functions (see nutrition).

      It is important to note that animal cells cannot synthesize from simple compounds certain necessary complex molecules. Instead, certain large organic molecules must serve as building blocks; such so-called essential dietary components include the vitamins, some amino acids, and certain fatty substances. In general, higher animals appear to have more restricted synthetic powers than lower ones and to require a correspondingly greater number of essential foodstuffs. Microorganisms in the intestines of vertebrates may synthesize materials essential for the host, so that the food of the latter need not contain these substances.

Types of food procurement

      Because much of animal evolution involves adaptation for the procurement of food, the extent of the meaning of the term feeding behaviour is not clear. Migratory habits of birds, for instance, no doubt evolved in part as a result of seasonal food shortages; individual birds now, however, start migration before food becomes scarce. Migration, therefore, important though it may be in the feeding ecology of a species, is not considered in this section, which concentrates on food-directed activities that are enhanced by a need for nutrients in the body of an individual. For similar reasons, activities such as host finding and acceptance by internal parasites for themselves or their offspring also are excluded.

      Even with these restrictions, the diversity of feeding patterns is bewildering. A useful classification has been put forward by British zoologists Sir Maurice Yonge and J.A.C. Nicol, based on the structural mechanisms utilized, although, as Nicol observed, “many animals make use of a variety of feeding mechanisms, conjointly, or separately as occasion demands”:

● I. Mechanisms for dealing with small particles.

● A. Pseudopodial (pseudopodium) (e.g., many protozoans). Pseudopods consist of fingerlike projections of the cell membrane and its contents (cytoplasm) that surround and engulf food.

● B. Ciliary (cilium) (e.g., sponges, bivalve mollusks). Cilia are minute hairlike projections of cell membranes that, by concerted beating in wave rhythm, set up water currents or physically move food particles.

● C. Tentacular (e.g., certain sea cucumbers). Tentacles are slender, flexible organs on the head. They may function in sensory perception and in actually securing food.

● D. Mucoid (mucus) (e.g., many snails, such as Vermetus). In this case, the food particles become attached to a sticky mucous sheet secreted by special cells.

● E. Muscular (e.g., certain coelenterates). In the jellyfish Rhizostoma, pulsations of the bell-shaped body draw water and food in through perforations in the arms, then expel the water after the food is removed.

● F. Setous (e.g., many small crustaceans, such as copepods). Setae are bristlelike projections of the cuticle and are found on the appendages of many invertebrates.

● II. Mechanisms for dealing with large particles or masses.

● A. For swallowing inactive food, such as bottom deposits (e.g., many polychaete worms, some fishes (fish)).

● B. For scraping and boring (e.g., some gastropod and bivalve mollusks).

● C. For seizing prey.

● 1. For seizing and swallowing only (e.g., Hydra, many polychaete worms, many lower vertebrates).

● 2. For seizing and masticating (e.g., Crustacea, mammals).

● 3. For seizing followed by external digestion (e.g., some starfishes, spiders). (In such cases, the secretory and absorptive surfaces of the digestive system may be applied to the food by everting [i.e., turning inside out] the stomach, a method employed by starfish. Alternatively, digestive enzymes may be injected into the prey, liquefying the tissues, which may then be ingested by the predator. This mechanism is found in spiders.)

● III. Mechanisms for taking in fluid or soft tissues.

● A. For piercing and sucking (e.g., leeches, mosquitoes).

● B. For sucking only (e.g., many flies, butterflies).

● C. For absorption through surface of body (e.g., various invertebrates feeding on decaying organic matter, internal parasites such as tapeworms, which lack a digestive tract).

      A different classification, often used, rests on the nature of the behaviour for procuring food:

● A. Filter (filter feeding) feeders strain food from the surrounding medium more or less indiscriminately.

● B. Selective feeders analyze the environment with their sense organs before aiming feeding responses at chosen items.

      Some feeding patterns, however, cannot be easily fitted into either of these classes alone; spiders, for example, sieve prey from the air with webs but perform directed responses to the insects trapped. Class I of the Yonge–Nicol system comprises mainly filter feeders; most members of classes II, IIIA, and IIIB are selective feeders. Selective feeding requires good sensory and nervous equipment and, in most cases, considerable mobility. It is therefore found mainly among higher animals. Yet the primitive sea anemones (sea anemone) are selective feeders in that, capable of paralyzing relatively large prey with their stinging cells, they do not discharge them until informed by chemical and tactile senses that prey is present. At the other extreme, whalebone (whale) whales are filter feeders, even though they are highly evolved mammals. Swimming at the surface with mouth open, they filter off large plankton (krill) using several hundred horny plates with hairlike fringes hanging down from the roof of the mouth; availability of a rich food source has caused the evolution of their feeding patterns to diverge widely from that of most other mammals.

      In all cases, the feeding patterns adopted by species are the result of evolutionary interplay between (1) structural properties inherent in their phylogenetic line and (2) the ecological situations to which they have been exposed. These interactions are too complex to make generalizations profitable. The best approach is to study each species as a separate case in the light of its entire biology. A few examples are given below.

      Filter feeders occur among sponges, coelenterates, polychaete worms, echinoderms, brachiopods, mollusks, arthropods, protochordates, fish, birds, and several other groups. As might be expected, filtering devices are diverse.

      In the oyster, constantly lashing cilia drive a water current—up to 34 litres (about 36 quarts) per hour—through the openings of perforated gill plates. Particles only two microns (0.002 millimetre) in size are wrapped in mucus and transported by other cilia to special food grooves, along which they pass to the mouth by the action of yet further cilia; particles that are too large, too heavy, or capable of producing irritation are sorted out and rejected by various mechanical means.

      The polychaete worm Chaetopterus (parchment worm) uses a bag of mucus, secreted by special body appendages, to strain the water it pumps through its burrow. The mesh openings of the bag, about 40 angstroms (40 × 10^-7 millimetre) wide, can even trap single molecules of large proteins. Every 20 minutes, the food-laden bag is taken to the mouth, consumed, and replaced by a new one.

      The sessile marine snail Vermetus gigas secretes mucus strings up to 30 centimetres (12 inches) long that extend away from the shell and entangle fine plankton. At intervals, the strings are drawn back toward the mouth and swallowed.

      Selective feeders, found among major animal groups, including coelenterates, annelids, echinoderms, mollusks, arthropods, and vertebrates, show even greater diversity of feeding patterns than do filter feeders. One striking point is that different groups deal in different ways with the same food in accordance with special capacities. Animals feeding on bivalve mollusks provide one example. The starfish (sea star) Asterias forces the valves apart by the relentless pull of its sucker tube feet and then everts its stomach through its mouth to digest the soft tissues inside the shell. The snail Sycotypus attacks an oyster by stealth: waiting until the valves open, it thrusts its shell between the valves and pushes its tubular feeding organ, or proboscis, into the soft parts. Another snail, Natica, supports the scraping action of a filelike structure called a radula with chemical dissolution by sulfuric acid, which is secreted by a gland on the proboscis, and drills a neat hole in a clam. Another snail, Fulgur, cracks a clam shell against its own shell by contracting its columellar muscle. Among birds, the oyster catcher (Haematopus ostralegus) adroitly cuts the closing muscles of a cockle with its chisel-shaped bill; herring gulls (Larus argentatus) break a shell by dropping it onto a rock. A sea otter (Enhydra lutris) cracks a clam on its chest, while floating on its back, by pounding it on a stone held between the forepaws.

      A few additional examples further illustrate the wealth of adaptations in selective feeding. The sluggish praying mantis (orthopteran insects of the family Mantidae (mantid)) stalk insect prey until within reach, then carefully orient themselves and accurately and rapidly extend forelegs adapted for grasping. For detecting prey in murky habitats, bats (bat) use an ultrasonic echolocation system; some fish use electric pulses in a somewhat comparable manner. anglerfish dangle a baitlike appendage of the first dorsal spine (luminous in deep-sea species) to lure the fish on which they feed toward their enormous mouths. Certain labroid fishes, which eat parasites off the bodies of other fish, induce their hosts to submit to treatment by a dancing approach; certain blennies treacherously mimic this behaviour and then rapidly bite the fin of the unsuspecting victim. Shrikes perform special wiping movements to remove the sting from certain prey, even without previous experience of stinging insects. The peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) dives at birds at speeds above 160 kilometres (100 miles) per hour; and the cheetah, or hunting leopard (Acinonyx jubatus), pursues antelope at more than 95 kilometres (60 miles) per hour. More than a thousand cormorants may join in a single fish drive. Instead of hunting, some species rob food collected by members of other species; among these robbers are the marauding skuas and jaegers (Stercorariidae) and man-of-war birds (frigate bird) (Fregata), which force weaker cousins to disgorge already swallowed prey, and various tropical flies that take up positions along the line of march of army ants and rob the passing workers.

      The driving force for the evolution of each of these adaptations is the survival value to the species of selecting the food sources for which it can successfully compete. For the same reason, closely related species living in the same area may exploit separate parts of the environment; e.g., woodland titmice (Parus) forage in different parts of the trees, and the larvae of different species of the moth genus Eupithecia prefer different food plants. The result of such evolution may be that a species becomes specialized to one kind of food, as have many internal parasites and phytophagous (plant-eating) insects. Such food may be exotic, as that of the larva of a moth (Galleria) that feeds on beeswax. In other species, such as the herring gull, each individual exploits a broad range of foods, thereby lessening the risk of starvation, as it is unlikely that all types of food will become exhausted at the same time.

Regulation of food intake

      Metabolic expenditure cannot exceed food intake for very long if an animal is to survive. One way to equalize the two processes is to decrease metabolism to a level sustainable by maximum intake, which may be limited by the ability to extract food from a meagre habitat. Data for filter feeders suggest that, in certain cases, continuous filtration at maximal rates may be barely sufficient to support normal growth and maintenance. Selective feeders have been found to undergo a more or less drastic reduction of metabolism during temporary starvation. Secondly, the capacity of the digestive system may set a limit on nutrient supply to the body. There is evidence that this is so in the minute filter-feeding crustacean Daphnia magna. Such limitations are known to play a role in human feeding behaviour.

      In man and many other selective feeders, nevertheless, the capacities of food-gathering and digestive systems exceed all but the most extreme demands of metabolism. To maintain nutritional balance, feeding must then be geared to metabolic rate. Information on the mechanisms and even on the existence of such regulation of intake is scanty, except for mammals and some insects.

Vertebrates

      Most information on the control of feeding behaviour in vertebrates has come from studies of mammals (mammal), but the general patterns found in mammals appear to be present in fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. Food intake requires a well-ordered sequence of searching, food getting, and ingestive activities. Sometimes the behaviour is elaborate. The following elements are distinguished in the various cats: stalking, spying, pouncing, thrusting down with the head, biting the neck, carrying into cover, plucking, and devouring. In grazing animals, the pattern is much simpler. In any case, the movement a feeding animal performs at a given moment depends largely on external stimuli; search and pursuit, for example, are unnecessary when prey is within reach. In this sense, any feeding act is a response to the environment, but it is not a simple “reflex.” On repeated presentation of the same food situation, the individual sometimes shows the appropriate response but at other times will fail to do so. These fluctuations in responsiveness are roughly parallel in all elements of feeding behaviour. Responsiveness tends to be higher with increasing lack of food in the body. It appears that responsiveness of the brain mechanisms for feeding is governed by messages reporting the nutritional state of the body. The contents of these messages, in other words, are primary determinants of the level of feeding motivation (for other influences see below Relation of feeding to other functions (feeding behaviour)). High and low levels of feeding motivation are the objective counterparts of the everyday concepts of hunger and satiety. Regulation of food intake, then, must hinge on the physiological mechanisms of the feeding motivation.

Specific hungers

      Lack of any nutrient with a specific anabolic function, such as vitamins or minerals, must be redressed by increased uptake of the particular substance. Little is known thus far of the specific hunger mechanisms that ensure increased uptake, but good evidence exists that a nutrient deficiency causes a specific rise in responsiveness to food containing the substance needed. In the case of thiamine (vitamin B₁), a learning (animal learning) process is involved. The deficient animal tries various kinds of food and concentrates on those that remove the deficiency. Specific appetite for salt in a sodium deficient subject, on the other hand, appears to rest on a genetically determined increase in reaction to the taste of sodium chloride and does not require any learning.

Caloric regulation

      Lack of fuel in the body can be corrected by intake of any of a variety of possible substances that provide energy. Most natural food contains a mixture of such substances. Energy deficiencies can be alleviated by increased responsiveness to food in general. Ingested food (i.e., calories) passes from (1) the mouth to (2) the digestive tract to (3) the bloodstream; if not needed at once for catabolic processes, the digested food passes to (4) storage sites, of which the fat tissues are the most important. These four regions are continuously monitored. A considerable amount is known about the monitoring roles of the organs for taste, smell, and touch in the mouth region; in addition, distension receptors in the digestive tract monitor the volume there, and chemoreceptors monitor the nature of the contents. Information concerning the availability of glucose (the most commonly utilized sugar) and possibly other fuels in the blood is recorded by cells located probably both in the brain itself and elsewhere (e.g., in the liver). Finally, circumstantial evidence suggests that the contents of fat tissues are also monitored. All food that passes through the body contributes to each of these four messages in succession, until it is eventually catabolized.

      The signals converge on the brain mechanisms for the feeding motivation over nervous and, possibly, humoural (chemical) pathways. Here they have effects of two kinds: (1) if signals from the four regions report increased fuel contents, the feeding motivation is lowered (satiety is raised), and (2) if taste (and perhaps other, e.g., visual) receptors are stimulated by palatable food the feeding motivation is increased. Intake stops when accumulation of signals of the first kind, overriding those of the second kind, causes hunger to drop below a critical level. Feeding is resumed when hunger surpasses this level as a result of fuel depletion by catabolism and emptying of the digestive tract by digestion and absorption. Once started, intake is enhanced by the positive effects of the food stimulus. The net result of this interplay of positive and negative feedbacks (feedback) from food responses is that caloric intake, observed over a sufficiently long period (at least several days), is equal to energy output over that period, so that body fuel content (body weight in fully grown individuals) remains constant.

      The brain mechanisms involved in vertebrate feeding motivation consist of a complex network, not yet well understood, encompassing, among other areas of the brain, the limbic system (the marginal zone of the forebrain) and the hypothalamus. The lateral hypothalamus (“hunger centre”) facilitates feeding responses. Electrical or chemical stimulation of this area elicits voracious feeding in satiated subjects, and its destruction causes more or less prolonged noneating (aphagia). If the subject is kept alive by artificial feeding, however, other brain areas may take over and reinstate more or less normal feeding. In contrast, the ventromedial (lower central) nucleus of the hypothalamus appears to be a clearinghouse for satiety signals. Subjects with lesions in this area stop feeding only at an abnormally high level of energy content (obesity) and grossly overeat (hyperphagia) until this level is reached.

Invertebrates (invertebrate)

      One of the few invertebrates in which the physiology of feeding behaviour has been extensively studied is the blowfly (blow fly) Phormia regina. Sucking is elicited by food stimuli on taste organs of the tarsi (the terminal sections of the legs) and proboscis. The meal continues until adaptation of these receptors causes their signals to decrease below the threshold of the sucking-response mechanism. This threshold is modulated, in the following manner, by food present in the digestive tract and in body fluids. As long as food is present in the foregut, the threshold is raised by signals from distension receptors in that area. The foregut is kept filled after a meal by release of food from the crop, where food taken up at the meal in excess of the capacity of the gut is temporarily stored. The threshold will remain high, therefore, until the crop is completely voided. The rate of crop emptying is directly related to the nutrient concentration of body fluids. The latter depends on the balance between absorption from the gut and uptake by the metabolizing tissues. The harder the fly works, therefore, the sooner sucking will be resumed, with the result that food intake is kept equal to caloric expenditure through appropriate spacing of meals.

Selection of food items

      Most natural habitats offer a diversity of food objects, and most selective feeders are more or less euryphagic—i.e., they ingest a variety of different foods; strict monophagy is less common. On the other hand, no euryphagic species includes in its diet all potential food objects present in the habitat, nor are those that it does eat taken in proportion to the amounts in which they are available. On what grounds, then, are diets selected?

Vertebrates

      A plant species constituting only a fraction of 1 percent of a pasture may make up the greater proportion of the diet of a sheep. Insectivorous birds also take a highly biased selection from the insect menu offered by the habitat. Although the relative abundance of different kinds of food is reflected in diets to some extent, this does not usually go so far that a single kind of food, however attractive and abundant, will become the sole constituent. Most vertebrates appear to take a varied diet whenever possible.

Responses to encountered food

      Diet selection in adult vertebrates proves to be largely the result of individual learning processes that guide the genetically determined response potentialities of the newborn individual into certain definite channels.

      Innate responsiveness appears to be broad in species that forage for themselves from birth and thus must deal with many different food situations. The pecking of newly hatched chicks of domestic fowl at all kinds of small objects, edible or not, is an example. Yet these chicks have certain innate (instinct) preferences for colour and other features. Such preferences may foreshadow the composition of adult diets. In newly hatched snakes (snake), for instance, feeding responses are more easily elicited with extracts of the natural food of adults of the same species than with preparations of food of closely related species. In contrast, colour preferences of ducklings of different species are similar, although the adult diets differ.

      Innate responsiveness may be narrow, however, in young vertebrates for whom the parent is the only source of food. Herring-gull chicks beg for food in response to a few “sign stimuli” provided only by the parent's head among all objects in the natural habitat. Sucking behaviour of newborn mammals is a somewhat comparable example. In such cases, responsiveness must be profoundly reorganized when the individual forages on its own.

      Responsiveness is channelled into the adult pattern through experience of taste, nutritional value, and possible noxious properties of various objects. In this way the individual is able to attach a definite palatability rating to each type of food regularly encountered and to associate this with visual or other characters by which it recognizes objects from a distance. As demonstrated in experiments, insectivorous birds may discriminate precisely among as many as 40 different prey species in this manner.

      In addition to palatability, detectability of food objects is a factor in diet selection. This has been studied in detail in visually foraging vertebrates. Detectability of an object depends on its degree of contrast with the background as to colour, shape, and movement. The individual predator (predation) can learn to detect prey that it finds only with difficulty at first; such “searching image formation” occurs only if the prey is palatable and encountered often.

      Finally, responses to encountered prey also depend on (1) the hunger level of the individual and (2) its experience regarding the general food situation. Hungrier predators have lower palatability requirements and may take greater risks to secure prey. At one and the same hunger level, a prey of slight palatability may be rejected if the predator “knows” that further search will probably bring better food but accepted if it “knows” that nothing tastier is available. As a result of these two influences, animals concentrate during scarcity on food scorned in times of plenty.

Food searching and diet

      The general type of food taken is often determined by the innate search method of the animal and the section of the whole habitat being exploited. A fish-eating bird, such as the osprey (Pandion haliaetus), which secures prey by diving into water (but not swimming), is limited in its diet to fish species that are active near the surface. The question of whether food searching is random is relevant here, for certain kinds of nonrandomness can influence diets. No simple answer can be given. Search must be random in the sense that oriented reactions to food objects can be made only after detection; at the same time, however, the search may be systematic in that (1) places not recently traversed are favoured over those just unsuccessfully explored, and (2) the locality where a prey has just been caught or seen may be searched with special attention. Further, (3) it is common for individuals to restrict their foraging to parts of the home range where ample food has been previously found, although exploration of other parts is interspersed and may change the destination of further trips if successful. In all, food searching appears to have sufficient nonrandomness to influence diets provided that different kinds of food concentrate in different parts of the home range.

      To sum up, vertebrate diet selection is largely molded by learning processes. Insofar as their course depends on chance experiences of individuals, differences in diet may develop even among members of one population of a species. On the whole, however, patterns of food selection are typical of the species, as all its members have similar genetic makeup and live in broadly similar ecological situations.

Invertebrates

      Learning processes appear to play a relatively small role in food selection by invertebrates. Diets are largely, though not entirely, determined by genetically fixed preferences. Intensive studies have been made of host-plant selection by phytophagous insects (insect). Here, as in host selection by animal parasites, the question is one of the choice of a place to live rather than of food alone, and the selection criteria may be largely a matter of compromise between nutritional requirements and other ecological functions. Leaving aside these complications, the factors leading to selection of a particular plant as food are predominantly chemical, although other properties, such as structure, also play a role. The chemicals involved in part are the nutrients themselves, but often the feeding responses are largely elicited by token substances that are not nutritionally essential but are characteristic of the species or family of plants that provide the natural hosts for the insect concerned.

Specialized aspects of feeding behaviour

Relation of feeding to other functions

      In principle, feeding must proceed throughout life at a pace equal to that of metabolism, but in many cases intake does not closely follow expenditure. It is permissible for intake to lag when there are reserves in the body. In some cases it is clear that large reserves are present in anticipation of increased metabolic demands or predictable food shortage—e.g., hibernating mammals store large amounts of tissue fat before the onset of dormancy; migrating birds do the same before departure. Insect larvae store nutrients to last them through the pupal stage. Adults of many insects, such as mayflies, do not eat at all and have reduced mouthparts. Other species, such as the hamster, solve similar problems by laying in extracorporeal hoards of food.

      Discrepancies between intake and expenditure, whether large or small, amount to distortion of the basic pattern of caloric regulation for the benefit of other functions.

      Like most biological processes, feeding has a diurnal periodicity; i.e., depending on the species, the active period may fall in daylight or during the night. Only in filter feeders is the activity often continuous.

      Priority claims of other functions may lead to suppression of feeding even in hungry animals. Thirsty mammals or birds eat much less than normal because food intake would aggravate water shortage in the body in various ways. The same is true of mammals in a hot environment—i.e., food intake increases heat production in the body and would thus intensify the heat stress—and of female mammals during estrus (periods of fertility). In all these cases, more or less marked loss of body weight results.

      Social facilitation is a further cause of discrepancies as here considered. Individuals often start feeding when they observe other members of the same (or other) species doing so. Both timing of feeding and choice of food are affected in this way. Unfamiliar food is accepted more readily by individuals observing others eating it. Such phenomena have been noted in mammals, birds, and fish.

Food-directed activities in social situations

      A further complication is that food-directed activities may be performed for the benefit of other individuals. This may serve their nutrition or some other function. Marked weight loss may occur in songbirds as they feed most of the prey to their nestling young. courtship feeding in many birds (and insects), in which the male gives food to the female, strengthens the pair bond rather than having a role in nutrition.

      Remarkably intricate is the behaviour by which individuals of social-insect species—honeybees, for example—ensure nutrition of the colony. Tropical honey (honey ant) ants (ant) store nectar collected by the workers of the colony in the crops (stomachs) of certain workers that remain inside the nest and become so gorged that they are hardly more than storage bins. They disgorge droplets upon solicitation by other ants in the nest. “Dairying” ants keep aphids (aphid) as suppliers of honeydew, a sugar- and protein-rich secretion. They milk the aphids by gently stroking them and, in return, protect them against enemies. The aphids may even be carried to the nest at the approach of winter and returned to a plant the following spring.

      A number of ants and termites (termite) cultivate fungi for food. Workers of tropical leaf-cutting ants carry pieces cut off the green leaves of trees to the nest, where other workers use them for making a bed on which the fungi grow. When a queen sets out to start a new nest, she carries a pellet of mycelium (the “root” system of the fungus) in a special pocket on her head during her nuptial flight and subsequent burrowing. After depositing it in the new nest, she manures it with a special secretion until the first workers start bringing in leaf fragments.

      The motivational background of behaviour as discussed above has not yet been sufficiently analyzed. Much remains to be done in the more intricate—and even in the more straightforward—cases before satisfactory insight into the functions and causes of the behaviour of animals toward their food is achieved.

Leendert de Ruiter

Additional Reading

W.C. Allee et al., Principles of Animal Ecology (1949), a classic survey of the entire field, is still useful as an introduction to the relation of animals to their food environment and gives many examples. The physiology of feeding behaviour is reviewed in Handbook of Physiology, section 6, vol. 1, Alimentary Canal: Control of Food and Water Intake, ed. by Charles F. Code (1967), which is largely though not entirely restricted to vertebrates. J.A. Colin Nicol, The Biology of Marine Animals, 2nd ed. (1967), gives a good introduction to the classification of feeding patterns with typical examples. A methodologically important systems analysis of the behaviour of vertebrate and invertebrate selective feeders may be found in C.S. Holling, The Functional Response of Predators to Prey Density and Its Role in Mimicry and Population Regulation (1965), and The Functional Response of Invertebrate Predators to Prey Density (1966). An introductory survey of the relations of insects to their food plants (and feeding behaviour of insects in general) is included in P.T. Haskell (ed.), Insect Behaviour (1966). More detailed and specialized material on this point is contained in J. de Wilde and L.M. Schoonhoven (eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium “Insect and Host Plant” (1969).

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