scholarly journals Social eavesdropping allows for a more risky gliding strategy by thermal-soaring birds

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (148) ◽  
pp. 20180578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannah J. Williams ◽  
Andrew J. King ◽  
Olivier Duriez ◽  
Luca Börger ◽  
Emily L. C. Shepard
Keyword(s):  
Resource Availability ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Surrounding Area ◽  
Circling Behaviour ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Critical Resource ◽  
Speed Selection ◽  
Soaring Birds

Vultures are thought to form networks in the sky, with individuals monitoring the movements of others to gain up-to-date information on resource availability. While it is recognized that social information facilitates the search for carrion, how this facilitates the search for updrafts, another critical resource, remains unknown. In theory, birds could use information on updraft availability to modulate their flight speed, increasing their airspeed when informed on updraft location. In addition, the stylized circling behaviour associated with thermal soaring is likely to provide social cues on updraft availability for any bird operating in the surrounding area. We equipped five Gyps vultures with GPS and airspeed loggers to quantify the movements of birds flying in the same airspace. Birds that were socially informed on updraft availability immediately adopted higher airspeeds on entering the inter-thermal glide; a strategy that would be risky if birds were relying on personal information alone. This was embedded within a broader pattern of a reduction in airspeed (approx. 3 m s −1 ) through the glide, likely reflecting the need for low speed to sense and turn into the next thermal. Overall, this demonstrates (i) the complexity of factors affecting speed selection over fine temporal scales and (ii) that Gyps vultures respond to social information on the occurrence of energy in the aerial environment, which may reduce uncertainty in their movement decisions.

scholarly journals Copy-when-uncertain: bumblebees rely on social information when rewards are highly variable

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 20160188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Smolla ◽  
Sylvain Alem ◽  
Lars Chittka ◽  
Susanne Shultz
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Agent Based Model ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Variable Environments ◽  
Foraging Decisions

To understand the relative benefits of social and personal information use in foraging decisions, we developed an agent-based model of social learning that predicts social information should be more adaptive where resources are highly variable and personal information where resources vary little. We tested our predictions with bumblebees and found that foragers relied more on social information when resources were variable than when they were not. We then investigated whether socially salient cues are used preferentially over non-social ones in variable environments. Although bees clearly used social cues in highly variable environments, under the same conditions they did not use non-social cues. These results suggest that bumblebees use a ‘copy-when-uncertain’ strategy.

scholarly journals Nest prospecting brown-headed cowbirds ‘parasitize’ social information when the value of personal information is lacking

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1861) ◽  
pp. 20171083 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. White ◽  
Hayden B. Davies ◽  
Samuel Agyapong ◽  
Nora Seegmiller
Keyword(s):  
Personal Information ◽  
Molothrus Ater ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Brood Parasites ◽  
Nest Selection ◽  
Strong Negative Relationship ◽  
Nest Quality ◽  
Cognitive Challenges

Brood parasites face considerable cognitive challenges in locating and selecting host nests for their young. Here, we test whether female brown-headed cowbirds, Molothrus ater , could use information acquired from observing the nest prospecting patterns of conspecifics to influence their own patterns of nest selection. In laboratory-based experiments, we created a disparity in the amount of personal information females had about the quality of nests. Females with less personal information about the quality of two nests spent more time investigating the nest that more knowledgeable females investigated. Furthermore, there was a strong negative relationship between individual's ability to track nest quality using personal information and their tendency to copy others. These two contrasting strategies for selecting nests are equally effective, but lead to different patterns of parasitism.

scholarly journals Individual exploration and selective social learning: Balancing exploration-exploitation trade-offs in collective foraging

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ketika Garg ◽  
Christopher T. Kello ◽  
Paul E Smaldino
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Optimal Combination ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Lévy Walks ◽  
Power Law Exponent ◽  
Collective Foraging ◽  
Exploration Exploitation

Search requires balancing exploring for more options and exploiting the ones previously found. Individuals foraging in a group face another trade-off: whether to engage in social learning to exploit the solutions found by others or to solitarily search for unexplored solutions. Social learning can decrease the costs of finding new resources, but excessive social learning can decrease the exploration for new solutions. We study how these two trade-offs interact to influence search efficiency in a model of collective foraging under conditions of varying resource abundance, resource density, and group size. We modeled individual search strategies as Lévy walks, where a power-law exponent (μ) controlled the trade-off between exploitative and explorative movements in individual search. We modulated the trade-off between individual search and social learning using a selectivity parameter that determined how agents responded to social cues in terms of distance and likely opportunity costs. Our results show that social learning is favored in rich and clustered environments, but also that the benefits of exploiting social information are maximized by engaging in high levels of individual exploration. We show that selective use of social information can modulate the disadvantages of excessive social learning, especially in larger groups and with limited individual exploration. Finally, we found that the optimal combination of individual exploration and social learning gave rise to trajectories with μ ≈ 2 and provide support for the general optimality such patterns in search. Our work sheds light on the interplay between individual search and social learning, and has broader implications for collective search and problem-solving.

scholarly journals Heterospecific song quality as social information for settlement decisions: an experimental approach in a wild bird

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Morinay ◽  
Jukka T. Forsman ◽  
Blandine Doligez
Keyword(s):  
Habitat Selection ◽  
Habitat Quality ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Great Tit ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Breeding Habitat ◽  
Site Quality ◽  
Ficedula Albicollis ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Local Habitat

AbstractAssessing local habitat quality via social cues provided by con- or heterospecific individuals sharing the same needs is a widespread strategy of social information use for breeding habitat selection. However, gathering information about putative competitors may involve agonistic costs. The use of social cues reflecting local habitat quality acquired from a distance, such as acoustic cues, could therefore be favoured. Bird songs are conspicuous signals commonly assumed to reliably reflect producer quality, and thereby local site quality. Birds of different species have been shown to be attracted to breeding sites by heterospecific songs, but whether they can use fine heterospecific song features as information on producer (and by extension habitat) quality remains unknown. We used a playback experiment in a wild population of collared flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis), a species known to eavesdrop on dominant great tits’ (Parus major) presence and performance, to test whether flycatchers preferred to settle near broadcasts of a high quality great tit song (i.e. song with large repertoire size, long strophes, high song rate), a low quality great tit song or a chaffinch song (control). Among old females, aggressive ones preferred to settle near broadcasts of high quality tit song and avoided broadcasts of low quality tit song, while less aggressive females preferred to settle near broadcasts of low quality tit song. Male personality or age did not influence settlement decisions. Our results show that collared flycatcher females use great tit song quality features as information for settlement decisions, though differently depending on their own competitive ability and/or previous experience with great tit songs. Our study therefore further illustrates the complex condition-dependent use of heterospecific social information for breeding habitat selection.

scholarly journals No differences between autistic and non-autistic adults in social influence on risky decision-making

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Hickman ◽  
Connor Keating ◽  
Jennifer Cook ◽  
Elliot Andrew Ludvig
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Risky Choice ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Risky Decision Making ◽  
Risky Decision ◽  
The Social ◽  
Comparable Performance ◽  
Autistic Adults

Everyday risky decisions are susceptible to influence from a variety of sources, including the social context in which decisions take place. In the general population, people update their risk preferences based on knowledge of choices made by previous participants. In this study, we examined the influence of social information on the risky decision-making of autistic adults, a group in which differences in social processing have been observed. Autistic and non-autistic adults completed a risky decision-making task in the presence of both social and non-social information, either choosing for themselves or someone else on each trial. Notably, the social information comprised tokens that represented preferences of previous participants and was thus devoid of overt social cues such as faces or gestures. The non-social condition comprised a previously validated method where tokens represented “preferences” generated by weighted roulette wheels. Participants significantly shifted their choices when the influence (social or non-social) suggested a less risky choice. There were no group differences in risky decision-making when deciding for oneself compared to others. Interestingly, no differences in the effects of social and non-social influence were found between autistic and non-autistic adults. Considering previous evidence of social influence differences when using overtly social cues, we suggest that the removal of social cues in our paradigm led to comparable performance between the autistic and non-autistic groups. The current study paves the way for future studies investigating a confounding effect of social cues, which will lead to important insight for theories of social influence in autism.

scholarly journals Social transmission of egg rejection in a cuckoo host

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Canchao Yang ◽  
William E Feeney
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Brood Parasitism ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Egg Rejection ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Brood Parasites ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rapid Dissemination ◽  
Barn Swallows

AbstractSocial learning can enable the rapid dissemination of behaviors throughout a population. Rejection of foreign eggs is a key defense in hosts of avian brood parasites; however, whether social cues can inform whether a host rejects an egg remains unknown. Here, we aimed to determine whether access to social information can influence egg rejection behavior in semi-colonial barn swallows (Hirundo rustica). By manipulating the social information available from a neighboring nest, we found that swallows that had access to social information (i.e. neighbor recently rejected an egg) were more likely to reject a foreign egg compared to those that did not have access to social information (i.e. neighbor did not reject an egg). This result provides the first empirical evidence that egg rejection behavior can solely be informed by social information, and in doing so highlights the dynamic nature of defenses that hosts can deploy against brood parasitism.

scholarly journals SOCIAL INFORMATION AND BIOLOGICAL INVASIONS: CHORUS SONGS ARE MORE ATTRACTIVE TO EUROPEAN STARLINGS IN MORE RECENTLY ESTABLISHED POPULATIONS.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Rodriguez ◽  
Martine Hausberger ◽  
Laurence Henri ◽  
Philippe Clergeau
Keyword(s):  
Biological Invasions ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Acoustic Stimulus ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Habitat Characteristics ◽  
European Starlings ◽  
Breeding Sites ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Two Populations

When biological invasions by animals occur, the individuals arriving in novel environments can be confronted with unpredictable or unfamiliar resources and may need social interaction to improve survival in the newly colonized areas. Gathering with conspecifics and using social information about their activities may reveal the location of suitable feeding and breeding sites. This could compensate for the absence of individual information about new habitats and constitute an advantage for new settlers. If a tendency to gather in response to social stimuli is transmitted from one generation to the next, and if the benefit of gathering is lower in long time established populations, there should be behavioural differences in receptivity to social cues in populations with different colonizing histories. We hypothesized that individuals of a social species like the European starling from relatively recently-established populations would be more responsive to social cues than individuals belonging to long-established populations. We conducted playback experiments using a starling chorus to test its acoustic attractiveness to populations of starlings with different colonizing histories. We compared the reaction of individuals from two populations in rural Brittany, western France, established for a long time, with three more recently settled ones: two populations from a propagation front in southern Italy and one urban population from Rennes city in Brittany. Our data supported our hypothesis: individuals from more recent populations were more responsive to the acoustic stimulus, and gave more calls in flight than individuals from populations with an older settlement history. We discuss the different behavioural responses we observed in the different populations and the potential effects of habitat characteristics and starling densities.

Improving Personal and Social Information Management with Advanced Tagging

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanesa Mirzaee ◽  
Maryam Najafian Razavi ◽  
Lee Iverson
Keyword(s):  
Web 2.0 ◽  
Information Management ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Social Information ◽  
Personal Information Management ◽  
Information Spaces ◽  
Management Application

This paper describes an innovative tagging model incorporated into a web 2.0 social and personal information management application. Our work utilizes web 2.0 tagging concepts in a new way in an effort to provide better support for users’ needs for contextualization and personalization of their information spaces for both personal…Cet article décrit un modèle innovateur d’étiquetage intégré à une application de gestion de l’information personnelle et sociale du Web 2.0. Notre travail utilise les concepts de l’étiquetage du Web 2.0 d’une manière nouvelle, afin de mieux subvenir aux besoins des utilisateurs pour la contextualisation et la personnalisation de leurs espaces informationnels, pour des fins personnelles… 

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