Adaptive foraging behaviour and the role of the overwintering strategy

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The overwintering strategy is a common feature among fishes from temperate to arctic regions and yet the overwintering has never been studied from the perspective of evolutionary ecology. In the present study our focus is on the overwintering of sandeel ecotypes in relation to the conflicting concerns of foraging and avoiding predation. We construct an IBM model for sandeel that combines bioenergetics, environmental forcing and behaviour. We then identify the timing of the overwintering that maximizes fitness (life time expected reproduction) for various environmental scenarios