Information use in an unpredictable environment: a case study on wild zebra finches

生活是高度不确定的。个人可以通过收集信息来减少这种不确定性，从而做出适应性决策。信息可以通过与环境的直接交互（个人信息）或通过观察其他个体（社会信息）来收集。信息使用几乎是动物（和人类）生活的所有方面的基础，因此可以预期对个体适应性和种群动态产生巨大影响。然而，我们目前缺乏对个人和社会信息使用在决策过程中的相对重要性的理解，特别是在野外。迄今为止，我们所知甚少的知识源于欧洲物种的繁殖决定，这些物种面临着相对可预测的温带季节性繁殖环境。信息的使用和决策在更不可预测的环境还没有得到重视，虽然信息使用育种决策可以预期是相当不同的。在这里，我们建议进行实验室和现场实验相结合的机会主义繁殖斑胸草雀，Taeniopygia guttata，在澳大利亚，以解决未解决的关键问题，在信息生态学与不可预测的环境条件。在一系列的实验中，我们将操纵不同尺度上的同种繁殖成功和/或自己的繁殖成功，以评估不同的信息来源（社会信息：同种繁殖成功;个人信息：自己的繁殖成功或自己的经验在该地区）将如何影响个人是否决定在一个地区繁殖和/或每次繁殖尝试投资多少。在这个过程中，我们将阐明如何使用信息的链接事件，如栖息地的选择，生殖投资和扩散。鉴于预期深远的生态和进化的影响，信息使用的所有重要方面的生活史，拟议的研究将不仅是一个重要的贡献，信息生态学领域，而且进化生物学，行为生态学，生态学和保护生物学。

Life is highly uncertain. Individuals can reduce such uncertainty for making adaptive decisions by collecting information. Information can be collected from direct interactions with the environment (personal information) or from observing other individuals (social information). Information use underlies nearly all aspects of animal (and human) life, and therefore can be expected to have vast consequences on individual fitness and population dynamics. Yet, we currently lack an understanding of the relative importance of personal and social information use in the decision-making process, especially in the wild. The little knowledge we have got to date stems from breeding decisions of European species that face relatively predictable breeding environments arising from the seasonality in temperate zones. Information use and decision-making in more unpredictable environments has not received attention yet, although information use in breeding decisions can be expected to be quite different. Here, we propose to conduct a combination of lab and field experiments with opportunistically breeding zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata, in Australia to address unresolved key issues in information ecology linked to unpredictable environmental conditions. In a series of experiments we will manipulate conspecific reproductive success on different scales and/or own reproductive success to assess how different information sources (social information: conspecific reproductive success; personal information: own reproductive success or own experience within the area) will influence whether individuals decide to breed in an area and/or how much to invest per breeding attempt. In the process we will elucidate how information use links events such as habitat selection, reproductive investment and dispersal. Given the expected far reaching ecological and evolutionary consequences of information use on all important aspects of life-history, the proposed study will not only be an important contribution to the field of information ecology but also to evolutionary biology, behavioural ecology, ecology and conservation biology.