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Synopsis Recent studies in group-living species suggest that being a valuable group member (a source of information or other resources) should increase social connectedness. This is because individuals may recognize and associate more with valuable individuals to increase the chances of benefiting from their activity, a process we refer to here as adaptive social plasticity. However, it is still unclear what minimum cognitive abilities are required for animals to alter their social interactions based on the value provided by different group members. We varied the cognitive skills of individuals in an agent-based model and evaluated changes in how access to a food resource impacts an informed agent's social connectedness. We modeled a social foraging scenario in an arena with one food patch, which only one informed individual (i.e., producer) can make accessible. Agents’ movement decisions were driven by three cognitive-based parameters: attention (probability of perceiving successful foragers), preference (probability of following successful foragers), and memory (number of time steps a successful forager was remembered). To understand what combination of these parameters may facilitate adaptive social plasticity, we compared the producer's strength (number of interactions) in a proximity network and the foraging success of non-producers between simulations with different combinations of parameter values. We found that non-zero values of each of our parameters are necessary for increases in producer strength and non-producer foraging success to occur. The largest increases in producer strength were seen at intermediate memory values and high values of attention and preference. Unless foragers were programmed to be able to move directly to the food patch when it was accessible to them, a non-zero value of memory was needed for them to experience an increase in foraging success. Furthermore, relationships between attention, memory, and foraging success were influenced by preference values, with the highest foraging success achieved at low to intermediate values of preference. Our results highlight the necessity of certain cognitive skills for animals to take advantage of the foraging success of their group mates, and scenarios in which rigid following behavior may lead to less beneficial results for foragers. This model lays the groundwork for further investigations into the cognitive and environmental factors expected to influence a feedback process between social connections and the value provided and received by group members.
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Social interactions and information use by foraging seabirds
What do seabirds perceive about the world? How do they do so? And how do they use the information available to them to make foraging decisions? Social cues provide seabirds with information about the location of prey. This can, of course, be passive and not involve higher‐order cognitive processes (e.g. simple conspecific or heterospecific attraction). However, seabirds display many behaviours that promote learning and the transmission of information between individuals: the vast majority of seabirds are colonial living, have an extended juvenile phase that affords them time to learn, routinely form intra‐ and interspecific associations, and can flexibly deploy a combination of foraging tactics. It is worth evaluating their foraging interactions in light of this. This review describes how seabirds use social information both at the colony and at sea to forage, and discusses the variation that exists both across species and amongst individuals. It is clear that social interactions are a critical and beneficial component of seabird foraging, with most of the variation concerning the way and extent to which social information is used, rather than whether it is used. While it may seem counterintuitive that large groups of potential competitors congregating at a patch can result in foraging gains, such aggregations can alter species dynamics in ways that promote coexistence. This review explores how competitive interference at a patch can be mitigated by behavioural modifications and niche segregation. Utilising others for foraging success (e.g.viasocial cues and facilitation at a patch) is likely to make population declines particularly damaging to seabirds if the quantity or quality of their social foraging interactions is reduced. Environmental changes have the potential to disrupt their social networks and thus, how these species obtain food and transfer information.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2011454
- PAR ID:
- 10562876
- Publisher / Repository:
- Cambridge Philosophical Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Biological Reviews
- Volume:
- 99
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 1464-7931
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1717-1735
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1111/BRV.13089
