Models in animal collective decision-making: information uncertainty and conflicting preferences

Abstract

Collective decision-making plays a central part in the lives of many social animals. Two important factors that influence collective decision-making are information uncertainty and conflicting preferences. Here, I bring together, and briefly review, basic models relating to animal collective decision-making in situations with information uncertainty and in situations with conflicting preferences between group members. The intention is to give an overview about the different types of modelling approaches that have been employed and the questions that they address and raise. Despite the use of a wide range of different modelling techniques, results show a coherent picture, as follows. Relatively simple cognitive mechanisms can lead to effective information pooling. Groups often face a trade-off between decision accuracy and speed, but appropriate fine-tuning of behavioural parameters could achieve high accuracy while maintaining reasonable speed. The right balance of interdependence and independence between animals is crucial for maintaining group cohesion and achieving high decision accuracy. In conflict situations, a high degree of decision-sharing between individuals is predicted, as well as transient leadership and leadership according to needs and physiological status. Animals often face crucial trade-offs between maintaining group cohesion and influencing the decision outcome in their own favour. Despite the great progress that has been made, there remains one big gap in our knowledge: how do animals make collective decisions in situations when information uncertainty and conflict of interest operate simultaneously?

Modelling biological evolution: recent progress, current challenges and future direction

“…In particular, the author considers the situation where the collective decision of social animals within a group involves elements of conflict: the ultimate decision can clash with the preferred decision of some individuals. Recently, the same author showed that conflicting interests of individuals eventually make the collective decision more accurate [18], and this paper addresses the generality of this finding. By constructing a fairly simple model and computing the probabilities of group decisions, the author concludes that for animals without personal preferences, the probability of making a correct collective decision is higher.…”

Biological System Behaviours and Natural-Inspired Methods and their Applications to Supply Chain Management

“…Groups often face a trade-off between decision accuracy and speed, but appropriate fine-tuning of behavioural parameters could achieve high accuracy while maintaining reasonable speed. The right balance of interdependence and independence between animals is crucial for maintaining group cohesion and achieving high decision accuracy [78]. Cai developed artificial fish school swarm algorithm applied in a combinatorial optimization problem to minimize the turnaround time of vessels at container terminals so as to improve operation efficiency customer satisfaction [79].…”

“…The right balance of interdependence and independence between animals is crucial for maintaining group cohesion and achieving high decision accuracy [78] FSm…”

Mathematical and theoretical ecology: linking models with ecological processes

“…In a thoroughly comprehensive overview of the topic, Conradt [19] considers how collective group decisions are made in the context of two key scenarios: (i) where information available to individuals in the group is uncertain and (ii) where individuals in the group have conflicting preferences. In the case of information uncertainty, Conradt [19] first details quorum responses, where the decision at the individual level is influenced by how many others in the group have made a certain decision. She then discusses the effective leadership model, where a small sub-set of the group that are 'informed' about the correct movement direction can lead a group of uninformed individuals effectively.…”