Diurnal variation in the production of vocal information about food supports a model of social adjustment in wild songbirds

Hillemann, Friederike; Cole, Ella F.; Keen, Sara; Sheldon, Ben C.; Farine, Dan

doi:10.1098/rspb.2018.2740

Cited by 19 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 52 publications

(84 reference statements)

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“…Such decisions can alter transmission pathways and outcomes. For example, songbirds consider their social environment when producing vocal information to recruit new members to a foraging site (Suzuki & Kutsukake 2017;Hilleman et al 2019) When behaviours are socially-learned, shared within subgroups of the population, and persist over time, they are recognized as culture (Laland & Hoppitt 2003). Considering how learned behaviours can affect individual social decisions reveals the potential for culture to underpin the co-evolution between social structure and behaviour.…”

Section: Information and Cultural Transmissionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of individual-to-society feedbacks in animal ecology and evolution

Cantor

Chaparro²,

Beck

et al. 2019

Preprint

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1.The social decisions that individuals make, in terms of where to move, who to interact with and how frequently, scale up to generate social structure. Such structure has profound consequences: individuals each have a unique social environment, social interactions can amplify or dampen individual differences at the population level, and population-level ecological and evolutionary processes can be governed by higher-level ‘emergent properties’ of animal societies.2.Here we review how explicitly accounting for social structure in animal populations has generated new hypotheses and has revised existing predictions in ecology and evolution. That is, we synthesize the insights gained by applying ‘network-thinking’ rather than the utility of applying social network analysis as a methodological tool. 3.We start with what has been learned about the generative mechanisms that underpin social structure. We then outline the major implications that social structure has been found to have on population processes, on how selection operates and organisms can evolve, and on co-evolutionary dynamics between social structure and population processes. Finally, we highlight areas for which there is clear evidence that accounting for social structure will refine current thinking, but where examples remain scarce.4.Applying ‘network thinking’ in biology presents not only new challenges, but also many opportunities to advance different areas of research. Addressing the question of how social structure changes the biological relationships linking individuals to populations, and populations to processes, is revealing commonalities across scientific disciplines. In doing so, animal social networks can bridge otherwise disparate research topics and, in the future, we hope will allow for more unified theories in biology.

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Section: Information and Cultural Transmissionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of individual-to-society feedbacks in animal ecology and evolution

Cantor

Chaparro²,

Beck

et al. 2019

Preprint

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“…Here, we study foraging behaviour in mixed-species flocks of tits to test whether individuals use 92 social information when assessing foraging patches. Tits and other species from the Paridae family 93 provide a good system for information diffusion experiments, because they readily use social 94 information in foraging contexts, from finding food (e.g., Sasvári1979; Farine et al 2015b;Firth et al 95 2016;Hillemann et al 2019a), to learning innovative foraging techniques (Aplin et al 2013(Aplin et al , 2015 96 and avoidance of unpalatable prey (Thorogood et al 2018). Further, it has been shown that 97 information does not spread between individuals at random but can be predicted by their connections 98 in the population-level social network (Aplin et al 2012;Farine et al 2015a;Firth et al 2016).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Two access 179 holes to the feeder were fitted with RFID antennae (scanning rate: 16 Hz), recording the identity of all trial. Data from full-feeder trials were previously published in Hillemann et al 2019a, in…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using personal information to evaluate the quality of patches supports existing theory on economic 257 decisions relating to social information use strategies. A number of theoretical models and empirical 258 studies have suggested that personal and social information are not weighed equally, and that the 259 relative use of social and personal information should depend upon the costs involved with acquiring 260 and using each (e.g., Valone &Templeton 2002;Kendal et al 2005;Hillemann et al 2019a). Whereas 261 personal exploration and trial-and-error sampling of the environment can be relatively costly, the cost 262 of gathering personal information about the quality of a patch upon arrival is much smaller (Kendal et 263 al.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Fagus sylvatica; Hinde 1952). Using social information to find potentially rich resources significantly 280 reduces the time to patch discovery (e.g., Hillemann et al 2019a), and this benefit may outweigh the 281 costs of occasionally getting incorrect information.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Information use in foraging flocks of songbirds - no evidence for social transmission of patch quality

Hillemann

Cole

Sheldon

et al. 2019

Preprint

Self Cite

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10Animals use behavioural cues from others to make decisions in a variety of contexts. There is 11 growing evidence, from a range of taxa, that information about the locations of food patches can 12 spread through a population via social connections. However, it is not known whether information 13 about the quality of potential food sources transmits similarly. We studied foraging behaviour in a 14 population of wild songbirds with known social associations, and tested whether flock members use 15 social information about the profitability of patches to inform their foraging decisions. We provided 16 artificial patches (ephemeral bird feeders) that appeared identical but were either profitable (contained 17 food) or unprofitable (contained no food). If information about patch profitability spreads via social 18 associations, we predicted that empty feeders would only be sampled by individuals that are less 19 connected to each other than expected by chance. In contrast, we found that individuals recorded at 20 empty feeders were more closely associated with each other than predicted by a null model simulating 21 random arrival of individuals, mirroring pattern of increased connectedness among individuals 22 recorded at full feeders. We then simulated arrival under network-based diffusion of information, and 23 demonstrate that the observed pattern at both full and empty feeders matches predictions derived from 24 this post-hoc model. Our results suggest that foraging songbirds only use social cues about the 25 location of potential food sources, but not their profitability. These findings agree with the hypothesis 26 that individuals balance the relative economic costs of using different information, where the costs of 27 personally sampling a patch upon arrival is low relative to the cost of searching for patches. This 28 study extends previous work on information spread through avian social networks, by suggesting 29 important links between how animals use information at different stages of the acquisition process 30 and the emerging population-level patterns of patch use. 32Key words: collective animal behaviour, economic decision-making, group foraging, local 33 enhancement, Paridae, social information, social network 103 whether a patch contains food or not. We provided artificial patches (bird feeders) that appeared 104 identical but were either empty or stocked with seed, and calculated the connectedness of individuals 105 arriving at each feeder using the edge strength from independently-recorded social association 106 network data. We then compared the order in which birds discovered these feeders with a null model 107 simulating random arrival of birds, to test two distinct hypotheses.

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Seasonal changes in mixed‐species bird flocks and antipredator information

Jiang

Sieving

Meaux

et al. 2020

Ecology and Evolution

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Animals acquire information produced by other species to reduce uncertainty and avoid predators. Mixed‐species flocks (MSFs) of birds are ubiquitous in forest ecosystems and structured, in part, around interspecific information transfer, with “nuclear” species providing information that other species eavesdrop on. We hypothesized that in a seasonal tropical forest, the amount of information produced by birds about predation would be dynamic and particularly would decrease inside MSFs when the nuclear species leave MSFs to breed. We obtained baseline information on MSF encounter rate and species composition along established sampling routes over 9 months near the Sino‐Vietnamese border. We also conducted three experiments to quantify information produced by different species in response to typical predator encounters, including a moving predator stimulus presented inside of MSFs, and a stationary predator model presented both inside and outside of MSFs. MSFs were much less frequent in the breeding season with fewer individuals of the nuclear species, David's Fulvetta (Alcippe davidi), participating, though the diversity of other species remained stable. Fulvettas were the dominant producer of alarm‐related information both to the moving and stationary stimuli in MSFs and were also among the most active mobbers to stimuli presented outside of MSFs. In the breeding season, they tended to call less to the moving stimulus, and substantially fewer individuals responded to the in‐flock stationary stimulus. Other species increased their own information production at stationary predator stimuli (inside and outside of MSFs) during the breeding season, perhaps due to their increased investment in offspring during this time. Yet even during the breeding season, David's Fulvetta remained the highest producer of information about predators in MSFs. Hence, while we show that information production in MSFs can be somewhat dynamic, we describe a continually asymmetric communication system, in which a nuclear species is important to the whole community.

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Diurnal variation in the production of vocal information about food supports a model of social adjustment in wild songbirds

Cited by 19 publications

References 52 publications

The importance of individual-to-society feedbacks in animal ecology and evolution

The importance of individual-to-society feedbacks in animal ecology and evolution

Information use in foraging flocks of songbirds - no evidence for social transmission of patch quality

Seasonal changes in mixed‐species bird flocks and antipredator information

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