Developing a social foraging theory

许多动物成群结队地寻找它们的食物，这种类型的觅食引发了一些重要的问题，这些问题一直是我过去十年研究计划的核心。当动物在一起觅食时，个体可以通过等待然后拿走别人找到的食物来避免投入精力寻找食物。什么时候等待和讨价还价是值得的？是什么因素使这种行为常见或罕见？这些问题是我的研究计划的核心，可以通过借用经济学中的一种名为博弈论的数学方法来解决。有了博弈论，我可以预测有多少人应该去寻找，有多少人应该去寻找。通过使用小型笼鸟，我发现，根据情况，个体在一种和另一种觅食模式下的投资会发生变化。现在，我提议研究个体的特征如何限制其对一种选择和另一种选择的使用，它用来调整对每种选择的个人投资的机制，以及不得不寻找几种难以发现的猎物如何影响它对这两种策略的使用。同样的原则也适用于收集信息，一些人采样，而另一些人通过观察他们的采样来获得信息，即他们使用公共信息。我建议使用视频和音频回放技术来探索个人如何以及何时使用视觉和听觉公共信息。利用他人努力的人的自发出现，无论是为了寻找食物还是收集信息，一直是并将继续引起广泛领域的兴趣，包括研究人类行为的领域(人类学、经济学、心理学)。因为剥削是合作出现的主要障碍之一，知道如何控制它将是知识的重大进步。

Many animals look for their food in groups and this type of foraging raises a number of important questions that have been at the heart of my research program for the last ten years. When animals forage together, individuals can avoid investing effort in searching for food by waiting and then taking the food found by others. When does it pay to wait and scrounge? What factors make this behavior common or rare? These questions are at the center my research program and can be addressed using a mathematical technique borrowed from economics called game theory. With game theory I can predict how many individuals should scrounge and how many should search. Using use small cage birds I found that depending on circumstances individuals change their investment in one and the other foraging mode. Now I propose to study how an individual's characteristics limit its use of one and the other alternative, the mechanisms it uses to adjust its individual investment in each alternative, how having to look for several types of prey that are difficult to detect affects its use of either tactic. The same principle applies to gathering information, some individuals sample while others get the information by watching them sample, that is they use public information. I propose to use video and audio playback techniques to explore how and when individuals use visual and auditory public information. The spontaneous emergence of individuals that exploit the efforts of others, whether for finding food or collecting information, has been and will continue to be of interest to a wide range of fields, including those that study human behavior (anthropology, economics, psychology). Because exploitation is one of the main barriers to the emergence of cooperation knowing how to control it would provide a major advance of knowledge.