Social Information Use Is a Process Across Time, Space, and Ecology, Reaching Heterospecifics

Abstract

Decision making can be facilitated by observing other individuals faced with the same or similar problem, and recent research suggests that this social information use is a widespread phenomenon. Implications of this are diverse and profound: for example, social information use may trigger cultural evolution, affect distribution and dispersal of populations, and involve intriguing cognitive traits. We emphasize here that social information use is a process consisting of the scenes of (1) event, (2) observation, (3) decision, and (4) consequence, where the initial event is a scene in such a process of another individual. This helps to construct a sound conceptual framework for measuring and studying social information use. Importantly, the potential value of social information is affected by the distance in time, space, and ecology between the initial observation and eventual consequence of a decision. Because negative interactions between individuals (such as direct and apparent competition) also depend on the distance between individuals along these dimensions, the potential value of information and the negative interactions may form a trade-off situation. Optimal solutions to this trade-off can result in adaptively extended social information use, where using information gathered some time ago, some distance away, and from ecologically different individuals is preferred. Conceivably, using information gathered from a heterospecific individual might often be optimal. Many recent studies demonstrate that social information use does occur between species, and the first review of published cases is provided here. Such interaction between species, especially in habitat selection, has important consequences for community ecology and conservation. Adaptively extended social information use may also be an important evolutionary force in guild formation. Complex coevolutionary patterns may result depending on the effect of information use on the provider of information.

Functional traits determine heterospecific use of risk‐related social information in forest birds of tropical South‐East Asia

“…Despite the well‐documented ubiquity of the heterospecific attraction to mobbing calls in animal communities and their presumed fitness benefits (Hurd, 1996; Schmidt et al., 2010; Seppänen et al., 2007; Sieving et al., 2004; Templeton & Greene, 2007), empirical evidence for such benefits has remained limited. While not directly testing the acquisition of such benefits, our findings suggest a reduction in future predation risk for species responding to heterospecific mobbing calls with attraction behaviors.…”

“…The behavioral response examined in our study was birds’ attraction to heterospecific mobbing calls to within 15 m of the playback center, under the context that we simulated of a perched predator being mobbed. On the part of the prey species, such attraction confers the benefit of increased information about the predator (e.g., its status, area of use; Dall et al., 2005; Seppänen et al., 2007), but typically does not involve the high risk and intense antipredator behaviors prey face most of the time with regard to ambush predators and surprise attacks, because the predator is already well located and unlikely to attack (Altmann, 1956). Therefore, the aspect of prey vulnerability most directly relevant to our study should concern the identity of predators the prey are vulnerable to, and therefore most likely to mob, rather than the modes of predator–prey interactions such as predator detection and escape, to which traits such as foraging technique and predator detection/escape strategy would have been more relevant (Lima, 1993; Sridhar et al., 2012).…”

“…This finding for the comparatively lesser known tropical ecosystems of Asia (Goodale & Kotagama, 2008) adds to the growing evidence for the ubiquity of heterospecific information networks in animal communities (Magrath et al., 2015; Schmidt et al., 2010; Seppänen et al., 2007). More importantly, we provide empirical support that the reduction in predation risk is likely both a major benefit and evolutionary driving force for the formation of such risk‐related information networks (Dugatkin & Godin, 1992; Magrath et al., 2015; Martínez, Gomez, Ponciano, & Robinson, 2016).…”

Social information trumps vegetation structure in breeding-site selection by a migrant songbird

“…In all analyses, vegetation structures (shrub cover, tree density) were treated as continuous variables. We tested for pairwise differences among treatment classes using general linear hypothesis tests (Searle 1971) in the 'MULTCOMP' package (Hothorn et al 2007) (Chevan & Sutherland 1991). We used generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) with binomial error structure (Broströ m 2007) to test the hypothesis that warbler settlement/absence depended on our treatments over repeated visits.…”

Fortune favours the brave: Movement responses shape demographic dynamics in strongly competing populations

“…Biologically, examples of responses to extrinsic signals abound in both intra-species (King, 182 1973;Stamps, 1977;Kimsey, 1980;Smith et al, 2012;Potts et al, 2013) populations, between populations of both different species (Seppänen et al, 2007;Latombe 188 et al, 2014;Vanak et al, 2013) and the same species (Potts et al, 2014).…”