Resource exploitation strategies in the presence of traffic between food sources

A mathematical model of food recruitment and resource exploitation in group-living organisms accounting for direct traffic of individuals between the available sources is developed. It is shown that traffic between sources gives rise to the enhancement of the range of stability of the homogeneous mode of exploitation and of the range of coexistence of homogeneous and semi-inhomogeneous ones, as well as the appearance of symmetry breaking transitions leading to fully inhomogeneous exploitation modes.