Foraging in Patchy Media (IMAGE) Santa Fe Institute Caption (a) Continuous patch use: a searcher uniformly de- pletes patch i at a fixed rate for a deterministic time T and moves to a patch i + 1 when patch i is sufficiently depleted. (b) Random search: a searcher seeks one or a few fixed tar- gets (circles) via a random walk. (c) Our model: a searcher depletes resources within a patch for a random time Ti. (d) Model time history. Phase i, of duration i, is composed of patch exploitation (duration Ti, shadowed) and migration (duration Z). The last phase is interrupted at time t, either during exploitation (shown here) or migration, and lasts . Credit Sidney Redner, <em>Physical Review E</em> Usage Restrictions None License Licensed content Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.