Causal evidence for the adaptive benefits of social foraging in the wild

Snijders, Lysanne; Krause, Stefan; Tump, Alan Novaes; Breuker, Michael; Ortiz, Chente; Rizzi, Sofia; Ramnarine, Indar W.; Krause, Jens; Kurvers, Ralf H. J. M.

doi:10.1101/2020.08.17.254250

Cited by 9 publications

(22 citation statements)

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“…The present study is relevant to empirical research on the sociality of animal populations (Dall et al 2004; Sih et al 2004; Dingemanse and Réale 2005; Evans et al 2020). In particular, a number of studies have shown that variation in sociality influences the spread of social information (Aplin et al 2012; Allen et al 2013; Farine et al 2015a; Snijders et al 2021). For example, the social network attributes of wild great tits ( Parus major ) can be used to predict the discovery rate of novel food patches (Aplin et al 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most prominent examples of a dynamic benefit of sociality is social information, which can provide individuals with knowledge about ephemeral resources or conditions, such as foraging or nesting sites, or predation risk (Doligez et al 2002; Danchin et al 2004; Valone 2007). This information can be transmitted through active signalling (Elgar 1986) or via inadvertent cues (Pöysä 1992; Galef and Giraldeau 2001), with highly social individuals likely to receive information sooner than poorly connected members of the population (Aplin et al 2012, 2015a; Snijders et al 2021). We should therefore expect sociality to increase access to survival-related information, but as is the case with disease, the prevalence of information in the population will depend on sociality, forming an eco-evolutionary feedback that causes the evolution of sociality to diverge from the fixed-benefit scenario.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social Information use Shapes the Coevolution of Sociality and Virulence

Ashby

Farine

2020

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Social contacts can facilitate the spread of both survival-related information and infectious disease, but little is known about how these processes combine to shape host and parasite evolution. Here, we use a theoretical model that captures both transmission processes to investigate how host sociality and parasite virulence (co)evolve. We show how selection for sociality (and in turn, virulence) depends on both the intrinsic costs and benefits of information and disease as well as their relative prevalence in the population. Specifically, greater sociality and lower virulence evolve when the risk of infection is either low or high and information is neither very common nor too rare. Lower sociality and higher virulence evolve when the prevalence patterns are reversed. When disease and information are both at moderate levels, the direction of selection depends on the relative costs and benefits of being infected or informed. We also show that sociality varies inversely with virulence, and that disease may be unable to constrain the evolution of sociality. Together, these findings provide new insights for our understanding of group living and how apparently opposing ecological processes can influence the evolution of sociality and virulence in a range of ways.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Information use Shapes the Coevolution of Sociality and Virulence

Ashby

Farine

2020

Preprint

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“…Model selection was conducted with R version 4.0.2 76 in R Studio version 1.2.5033 (©2009-2019 RStudio, Inc.). All the data and code generated and analyzed during this study are available in the Open Science Framework repository 77 . Models I and III (binary dependent variable) were analyzed with generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) with a binomial error distribution and logit link function using the glmer function from the 'lme4' package 78 , fitted by maximum likelihood (Laplace approximation) using the bobyqa optimizer.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All the data generated and analyzed during this study are available in the Open Science Framework repository, https://osf.io/csajg 77 .…”

Section: Data Availabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Causal evidence for the adaptive benefits of social foraging in the wild

et al. 2021

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Sociality is a fundamental organizing principle across taxa, thought to come with a suite of adaptive benefits. However, making causal inferences about these adaptive benefits requires experimental manipulation of the social environment, which is rarely feasible in the field. Here we manipulated the number of conspecifics in Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in the wild, and quantified how this affected a key benefit of sociality, social foraging, by investigating several components of foraging success. As adaptive benefits of social foraging may differ between sexes, we studied males and females separately, expecting females, the more social and risk-averse sex in guppies, to benefit more from conspecifics. Conducting over 1600 foraging trials, we found that in both sexes, increasing the number of conspecifics led to faster detection of novel food patches and a higher probability of feeding following detection of the patch, resulting in greater individual resource consumption. The extent of the latter relationship differed between the sexes, with males unexpectedly exhibiting a stronger social benefit. Our study provides rare causal evidence for the adaptive benefits of social foraging in the wild, and highlights that sex differences in sociality do not necessarily imply an unequal ability to profit from the presence of others.

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“…Individuals benefit from foraging socially through diverse mechanisms such as local enhancement (e.g., cues from successful foragers provide information about food location) or social facilitation (e.g., initiating foraging quicker in the presence of foraging conspecifics), which allow an increase in food detection and foraging success (Galef & Giraldeau, 2001; Giraldeau & Beauchamp, 1999; Giraldeau & Caraco, 2018; Grand & Dill, 1999; Pitcher et al, 1982; Snijders et al, 2021; Ward & Zahavi, 1973). Such benefits are thought to be due to an increased sensorial scope, which allows for more information to be collected and disseminated within the group (Clark & Mangel, 1986).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in movement characteristics in response to private and social information acquisition of socially foraging fish

Mazué

Adams

Seebacher

et al. 2021

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To overcome the cost of competition resulting from close social proximity while foraging in a group, individuals may balance their use of private (i.e. acquired from personal sampling) and social (i.e. acquired by watching other individuals) information in order to adjust their foraging strategy accordingly. Reliability of private information about environmental characteristics, such as the spatial distribution of prey, is thus likely to affect individual movement and social interactions during foraging. Our aim was to investigate how movement characteristics of foraging individuals changed as they acquired reliable private information about the spatial occurrence of prey in a foraging context. We allowed guppies (Poecilia reticulata) to develop the reliability of their private knowledge about prey spatial occurrence by repeatedly testing shoals in a foraging task under three experimental distributions of prey: 1) aggregated prey forming three patches located in fixed locations, 2) scattered distribution of prey with random locations, or 3) no prey (used as control). We then applied tracking methods to obtain individual time series of spatial coordinates from which we computed a suite of movement variables reflecting search effort, social proximity and locomotion characteristics during foraging, in order to examine changes occurring over repeated trials and to investigate which best explained foraging success. We show that foraging shoals became more efficient at finding and consuming food over the first three days by increasing their time spent active. Over time, individuals foraging on either scattered or aggregated prey travelled greater distances, showed an increasing distance to their closest neighbour and became slightly more stochastic in their acceleration profile, compared to control individuals. We found that behaviour changed as private information increased over time. Social proximity was the major predictor of foraging success in the absence of prior foraging information, while stochasticity in acceleration and search effort became the most important predictors of foraging success as information increased. In conclusion, we show that individual movement patterns changed as they acquire private information. Contrary to our predictions, the spatial distribution of prey did not affect any of the movement variables of interest. Our results emphasise the importance of information, both private and social, in shaping movement behaviour in animals. Keywords: social foraging, movement, private information, prey spatial distribution, fish.

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Causal evidence for the adaptive benefits of social foraging in the wild

Cited by 9 publications

References 82 publications

Social Information use Shapes the Coevolution of Sociality and Virulence

Social Information use Shapes the Coevolution of Sociality and Virulence

Causal evidence for the adaptive benefits of social foraging in the wild

Changes in movement characteristics in response to private and social information acquisition of socially foraging fish

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