Cooperation, Coordination, and Cognition in Fission-Fusion Societies

由于个人需要协调他们的活动以从群体生活中受益，群体决策对社会至关重要，特别是如果群体成员相互合作。动物如何做出群体决策对我们理解动物社会具有重要意义。模型表明，即使个人对行动意见不一，共享（“民主”）决策的效果也优于非共享（“专制”）决策。这是令人惊讶的，因为在大多数其他情况下，个人偏好的差异导致性别，年龄或亲属特定的行为。然而，检验理论模型预测的实证研究才刚刚开始出现。我的目标是研究裂变融合社会中的群体决策，在这种社会中，个人可以避免不符合自己利益的决策。我将操纵三个影响群体决策的因素，但这些因素尚未在野生脊椎动物中得到详细研究。由于蝙蝠生活在依赖群体决策的裂变融合社会中，蝙蝠为这类研究提供了新的机会。我将重点介绍两种蝙蝠，我有关于它们的社会和遗传群体结构的长期数据。结合行为，遗传，人口统计学和形态学数据，包括在体内的大脑结构的磁共振成像领域的实验，我的目标是评估蝙蝠的能力，兴趣和个性不同，使群体决策。

As individuals need to coordinate their activities to benefit from group living, group decisions are essential for societies, especially if group members cooperate with each other. How animals make group decisions has important implications for our understanding of animal societies. Models show that shared (“democratic”) decisions outperform unshared (“despotic”) decisions, even if individuals disagree about actions. This is surprising as in most other contexts, differences in individual preferences lead to sex-, age-, or kin-specific behaviour. However, empirical studies testing the predictions of the theoretical models are only beginning to emerge. My aim is to study group decision-making in fission-fusion societies, where individuals can avoid decisions that are not in their interest. I will manipulate three factors that affect group decisionmaking, but which have not yet been studied in detail in wild vertebrates. Because bats live in fission-fusion societies that depend on group decisions, bats provide novel opportunities for this kind of research. I will focus on two bat species, for which I have long-term data on social and genetic colony structures. Combining field experiments with behavioural, genetic, demographic, and morphological data, including in vivo magnetic resonance imaging of brain structures, I aim to assess how bats that differ in their abilities, interests and personalities make group decisions.