The foraging movement patterns of some animals exhibit striking geometric regularity. Understanding the patterns of this smooth foraging activity is very important in feeding ecology. Sine-generated curves provide the basis for a new methodology to model foraging patterns and are introduced in this paper to describe smooth foraging movements. Sine-generated curves are not sine curves, but the direction angle of the curve varies in a sinusoidal fashion. The displacement that follows sine-generated curves is a strategy of animal movement that allows it to minimize energy when exploring space to search for food. This is because these curves have the least curvature per unit length which implies less energy cost for the animal while turning. The main aim of this paper is to introduce a new model and to illustrate it by modelling the movement of the juvenile rock lobster Panulirus cygnus found on the coast of Western Australia. The model presented here is expected to be adequate for meandering animals that live in homogeneous media in particular some diving animals and some animals that move over an homogeneous sea bottom. It is also expected that the new model will be of interest in paleoecology to model tracks in the fossil record.
Eulogio Pardo-Igúzquiza, Peter A. Dowd,A new model in animal movement ecology: Optimal individual foraging patterns in meandering animals, Ecological Modelling, Volume 521,2026,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2026.111711.