Optimal Foraging Theory

Optimal foraging theory is a set of concepts and models that aim to explain the wide variation in foraging strategies among individuals and between species, guided by the assumption that living things are designed by a history of natural selection. The use of foraging models in anthropology was prompted by the geographic and temporal variation in resource use among people who live on wild foods. Foraging models provide a theoretical basis for linking the variation both among and within populations to features of local ecology—with initially unexpected implications for what has happened in human evolution.