Environmental quality determines finder-joiner dynamics in socially foraging three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus)
Environmental quality determines finder-joiner dynamics in socially foraging three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus)
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DOI：
10.1007/s00265-016-2111-5
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发表时间：
2016-06-01
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
King, Andrew J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hansen, Matthew J.;Ward, Ashley J. W.;King, Andrew J.
群居觅食的动物能够获取有关食物资源质量和位置的社会信息。个体对社会信息和自身私有信息的依赖程度取决于众多生态和社会因素。一般来说，在食物资源在空间和/或时间上呈斑块状分布的情况下，利用社会信息并加入到已发现食物斑块处的其他个体中，能够减少搜索时间以及找到食物的差异。在此，我们探究了三刺鱼（Gasterosteus aculeatus）鱼群的社会觅食动态，并研究了鱼类何时倾向于使用私有信息自己寻找食物，或者依赖社会信息并关注其他鱼类的食物发现。我们表明，鱼类对不同觅食策略（即寻找或加入）的选择可以用环境质量来解释。在食物斑块较大的环境中，鱼类发现者份额减少，倾向于采用加入觅食策略；在食物斑块较小的环境中，鱼类依赖私有信息，倾向于自己发现食物斑块。然而，我们发现寻找和加入并不会像理论预测的那样带来相同的觅食回报，相反，在我们所研究的所有环境中，采用寻找策略的鱼类回报更高。这些不平等的回报部分可以通过每次觅食事件中鱼类摄食量的个体间持续差异以及体型较大的鱼类摄食更多食物来解释。总体而言，我们简单的实验方法表明，群居觅食的三刺鱼确实表现出一定程度的行为灵活性，使它们能够在一系列环境条件下有效地利用食物斑块。
动物必须不断做出获取资源的决策以生存和繁殖；然而，资源时空分布的内在变异性意味着最佳决策不是固定的。动物如何确保它们对变化做出有效反应呢？对于群居生活和觅食的动物，环境条件如何决定它们是使用私有信息还是社会信息来应对这些挑战呢？这些是行为生态学中的重要问题，对动物应对突发环境变化的能力具有重要意义。在此，我们通过实证表明，三刺鱼能够根据其环境中食物的丰富度和分布情况，灵活且适应性地在行为策略之间切换以获取觅食资源，建立了一个新的模型系统，以扩展和加深我们对社会觅食动态以及动物群体在多变世界中如何最佳运作的理解。
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.Animals must continually make decisions to secure resources to survive and reproduce; however, inherent variability in the spatio-temporal distribution of resources means that the best decision is not fixed. How do animals ensure they respond effectively to variation? For animals that live and forage in groups, how do environmental conditions determine whether they use private information or social information to meet these challenges? These are important questions in behavioural ecology and have great significance to animals' ability to deal with unheralded environmental change. Here, we show empirically that three-spined sticklebacks flexibly and adaptively switch between behavioural tactics to acquire foraging resources in accordance with the abundance and distribution of forage in their environment, establishing a new model system to extend and build our understanding of social foraging dynamics and how animal groups optimally function in a variable world.