Editing Behavioral ecology (section)

===Ideal free distribution===
{{Main|Ideal free distribution}}

One of the major models used to predict the distribution of competing individuals amongst resource patches is the ideal free distribution model. Within this model, resource patches can be of variable quality, and there is no limit to the number of individuals that can occupy and extract resources from a particular patch. Competition within a particular patch means that the benefit each individual receives from exploiting a patch decreases logarithmically with increasing number of competitors sharing that resource patch. The model predicts that individuals will initially flock to higher-quality patches until the costs of crowding bring the benefits of exploiting them in line with the benefits of being the only individual on the lesser-quality resource patch. After this point has been reached, individuals will alternate between exploiting the higher-quality patches and the lower-quality patches in such a way that the average benefit for all individuals in both patches is the same. This model is ''ideal'' in that individuals have complete information about the quality of a resource patch and the number of individuals currently exploiting it, and ''free'' in that individuals are freely able to choose which resource patch to exploit.<ref>{{cite book|last=Fretwell|first=Stephen D.|title=Population in a Seasonal Environment |url=https://archive.org/details/populationsinsea0000fret|url-access=registration|year=1972|publisher=Princeton University Press|location=Princeton, NJ}}</ref>

An experiment by Manfred Malinski in 1979 demonstrated that feeding behavior in [[three-spined stickleback]]s follows an ideal free distribution. Six fish were placed in a tank, and food items were dropped into opposite ends of the tank at different rates. The rate of food deposition at one end was set at twice that of the other end, and the fish distributed themselves with four individuals at the faster-depositing end and two individuals at the slower-depositing end. In this way, the average feeding rate was the same for all of the fish in the tank.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Milinski |first=Manfred |title=An Evolutionarily Stable Feeding Strategy in Sticklebacks |journal=Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie |date=1979 |volume=51 |issue=1 |pages=36–40 |doi=10.1111/j.1439-0310.1979.tb00669.x}}</ref>