Beteiligte:
Hansen, Matthew J.;
Ward, Ashley J. W.;
Fürtbauer, Ines;
King, Andrew J.
Erschienen:
Springer, 2016
Erschienen in:Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Sprache:
Englisch
ISSN:
1432-0762;
0340-5443
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Beschreibung:
<p>Animals that forage in groups have access to social information concerning the quality and location of food resources available. The degree to which individuals rely on social information over their own private information depends on a myriad of ecological and social factors. In general, where resources are patchy in space and/or time, individuals that use social information and join others at previously identified food patches can reduce both search times and the variance in finding food. Here, we explore social foraging dynamics of shoals of three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) and investigate when fish tend to use private information and find food themselves, or rely on social information and attend to the food discoveries of others. We show that fish's allocation to alternative foraging tactics (i.e. finding or joining) can be explained by environmental quality. In environments with large food patches, fish experience a reduced finder's share and tend to adopt joining foraging tactics; in environments with small food patches, fish rely on private information and tend to discover their own food patches. However, we found that finding and joining do not result in equal foraging returns as predicted by theory, and instead payoffs were higher for fish adopting finding tactics in all environments we studied. These unequal payoffs may be explained, in part, by consistent inter-individual differences in the amount of food fish consumed per foraging event and by heavier fish consuming more food. Overall, our simple experimental approach suggests that socially foraging three-spined sticklebacks do show a degree of behavioural flexibility that enables them to efficiently exploit food patches under a range of environmental conditions.</p>