Behavioural Ecology through the Lens of Economics: Economic Principles as a Universal Framework for Understanding Animal Decision-making

Abstract

Behavioural ecology and economics share a common interest in how decision-makers allocate limited resources under conditions of constraint, uncertainty, and competing demands. This review examines how selected economic concepts can help interpret animal decision-making across birds, insects, fishes, and non-human primates. The review focuses on cost-benefit analysis, bounded rationality, the marginal value theorem, risk aversion, loss aversion, opportunity cost, negative externalities, and the endowment effect. Evidence from foraging, patch use, predation-risk responses, reward evaluation, and anthropogenic disturbance indicates that many animal decisions can be understood as adaptive responses to trade-offs involving energy, time, risk, and reproductive consequences. Examples include prey-handling decisions in crows, patch-residence behaviour in domestic chicks, risk-sensitive responses in ants and bees, hunger-dependent foraging in sticklebacks, and reference-dependent choices in capuchin monkeys. The review also considers how externality-based reasoning may inform conservation responses to human-generated disturbances such as traffic noise. Overall, the evidence suggests that economic models provide useful functional tools for describing and comparing animal decision-making, particularly when animals face variable rewards, incomplete information, or conflicting fitness demands. However, the reviewed evidence is uneven across taxa and behavioural contexts, and the application of economic terminology should be made cautiously. Economic frameworks should therefore be treated as interpretive and predictive tools rather than as evidence that animals consciously apply economic reasoning. Further comparative and experimental work is needed to clarify the generality, mechanisms, and ecological limits of these parallels.