The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging Conference, Monday 3rd - Wednesday 5th November 2025, Edgbaston Park Hotel, University of Birmingham

For any animal it is essential to accurately decide how to forage for resources. Ethologists and ecologists have spent years studying what properties of changing, complex environments influence these decisions. Yet, until recently, there had been little research examining the brain mechanisms that govern how animals or humans forage.

Over the last decade there has been an explosion of research using experimental paradigms inspired by theories from ethology and ecology to probe the cells, circuits, systems and neurotransmitters in the brain that allow an animal to forage successfully. Such approaches are also being used to understand psychiatric and neurological disorders that could be characterised through deficits in foraging behaviours. However, gaining a deeper mechanistic understanding of diverse foraging behaviours – and realising the potential of this framework for broader  application – requires collaboration across disciplines. Fields such as computational neuroscience, behavioural and cognitive neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, ecology, and ethology each offer unique insights. Integrating these perspectives is key to advancing this emerging multidisciplinary area of research.

This conference aims to build on the momentum offered by a previous meeting at Janelia, and the future of foraging virtual seminar series, to foster intellectual exchange across these disciplines. 

This meeting will focus on the following key issues:

1. Is it possible to establish mechanistic principles of foraging that are shared across species?
   
2. How can computational neuroscience principles be meshed with foraging theories to develop mechanistic insight?
   
3. What key questions and knowledge gaps should drive the future direction of foraging research?
   
4. How can foraging-based frameworks be used to uncover the underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms of psychiatric and neurological disorders?