Cooperation, Coordination, and Cognition in Fission-Fusion Societies

由于个人需要协调他们的活动才能从群体生活中受益，群体决策对社会至关重要，特别是如果群体成员相互合作的话。动物如何做出群体决策对我们理解动物社会有着重要的意义。模型表明，共享(“民主”)决策优于非共享(“专制”)决策，即使个人对行动有不同意见。这一点令人惊讶，因为在大多数其他情况下，个人偏好的差异会导致特定性别、年龄或亲属的行为。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聚变社会中的群体决策，在这种社会中，个人可以避免做出不符合他们利益的决定。我将操纵三个影响群体决策的因素，但这三个因素尚未在野生脊椎动物身上进行详细研究。由于蝙蝠生活在依赖群体决策的裂变聚变社会中，蝙蝠为这类研究提供了新的机会。我将把重点放在两种蝙蝠上，我对这两种蝙蝠有关于社会和遗传群体结构的长期数据。将野外实验与行为、遗传、人口统计和形态数据相结合，包括大脑结构的活体磁共振成像，我的目标是评估不同能力、兴趣和个性的蝙蝠如何做出群体决策。

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.