Foraging for resources is a fundamental animal activity. Successful and efficient foraging will ultimately lead to both indirect and direct selective advantages by providing animals with the time and resources needed to fulfil other life demands. The performance of a forager is ultimately determined by its behaviour and ability once placed within the context of its environment. As such, the environment of a forager is likely to have had a substantial effect on its perceptive and cognitive abilities. Here, we investigate the effect of various forms of heterogeneity (non-randomness) in resource distributions on the efficacy of forager cognisance (the degree to which it can learn its environment). To this end, several foraging strategies utilising different degrees of cognisance are assessed and compared across multiple simulated landscapes. It is shown that both increases in resource heterogeneity and broad-scale cognitive abilities (memory and learning) can lead to an improved foraging performance. Increased resource heterogeneity is also shown to favour the use of the broad-scale cognitive abilities. Importantly however, these results are dependent on the forager being able to first maintain an adequate perception of its local environment (via its sensory and short-term memory capabilities). If a forager's localised perception is limited, either increased resource heterogeneity or the use of broad-scale cognitive abilities may instead reduce the forager's performance. These observations ultimately call into question the use of advanced (and therefore expensive) cognisance in homogeneous environments or when the ability to form a localised perception is restricted.

中文翻译：

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资源景观的异质性促进了觅食者认知和感知能力的提高

觅食资源是动物的一项基本活动。成功而高效的觅食最终将为动物提供满足其他生活需求所需的时间和资源，从而带来间接和直接的选择优势。觅食者的表现最终取决于其在所处环境中的行为和能力。因此，采集者的环境可能对其感知和认知能力产生重大影响。在这里，我们研究了资源分布中各种形式的异质性（非随机性）对觅食者认知功效（它了解环境的程度）的影响。为此，在多个模拟景观中评估和比较了几种利用不同认知程度的觅食策略。研究表明，资源异质性和广泛认知能力（记忆和学习）的增加都可以提高觅食性能。资源异质性的增加也有利于广泛认知能力的使用。然而重要的是，这些结果取决于觅食者是否能够首先保持对其当地环境的充分感知（通过其感觉和短期记忆能力）。如果采集者的局部感知受到限制，那么资源异质性的增加或广泛认知能力的使用可能反而会降低采集者的表现。这些观察结果最终对在同质环境中或当形成局部感知的能力受到限制时使用高级（因此昂贵）认知的问题提出了质疑。