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Spiegel O, Michelangeli M, Sinn DL, Payne E, Klein JRV, Kirkpatrick J, Harbusch M, Sih A. Resource manipulation reveals interactive phenotype-dependent foraging in free-ranging lizards. J Anim Ecol 2024; 93:1108-1122. [PMID: 38877691 DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.14128] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/28/2021] [Accepted: 05/07/2024] [Indexed: 06/16/2024]
Abstract
Recent evidence suggests that individuals differ in foraging tactics and this variation is often linked to an individual's behavioural type (BT). Yet, while foraging typically comprises a series of search and handling steps, empirical investigations have rarely considered BT-dependent effects across multiple stages of the foraging process, particularly in natural settings. In our long-term sleepy lizard (Tiliqua rugosa) study system, individuals exhibit behavioural consistency in boldness (measured as an individual's willingness to approach a novel food item in the presence of a threat) and aggressiveness (measured as an individual's response to an 'attack' by a conspecific dummy). These BTs are only weakly correlated and have previously been shown to have interactive effects on lizard space use and movement, suggesting that they could also affect lizard foraging performance, particularly in their search behaviour for food. To investigate how lizards' BTs affect their foraging process in the wild, we supplemented food in 123 patches across a 120-ha study site with three food abundance treatments (high, low and no-food controls). Patches were replenished twice a week over the species' entire spring activity season and feeding behaviours were quantified with camera traps at these patches. We tracked lizards using GPS to determine their home range (HR) size and repeatedly assayed their aggressiveness and boldness in designated assays. We hypothesised that bolder lizards would be more efficient foragers while aggressive ones would be less attentive to the quality of foraging patches. We found an interactive BT effect on overall foraging performance. Individuals that were both bold and aggressive ate the highest number of food items from the foraging array. Further dissection of the foraging process showed that aggressive lizards in general ate the fewest food items in part because they visited foraging patches less regularly, and because they discriminated less between high and low-quality patches when revisiting them. Bolder lizards, in contrast, ate more tomatoes because they visited foraging patches more regularly, and ate a higher proportion of the available tomatoes at patches during visits. Our study demonstrates that BTs can interact to affect different search and handling components of the foraging process, leading to within-population variation in foraging success. Given that individual differences in foraging and movement will influence social and ecological interactions, our results highlight the potential role of BT's in shaping individual fitness strategies and population dynamics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Orr Spiegel
- School of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Marcus Michelangeli
- Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden
- School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia
| | - David L Sinn
- Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, California, USA
| | - Eric Payne
- Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, California, USA
| | - Janine-Rose V Klein
- Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, USA
| | - Jamie Kirkpatrick
- Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, USA
| | - Marco Harbusch
- Georg-August-Büsgen-Institut, Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Andrew Sih
- Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, California, USA
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Toure MW, Reader SM. Colour biases in learned foraging preferences in Trinidadian guppies. Ethology 2021. [DOI: 10.1111/eth.13237] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- M. Wyatt Toure
- Department of Biology McGill University Montreal QC Canada
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Tóth Z, Jaloveczki B. Tutors do not facilitate rapid resource exploitation in temporary tadpole aggregations. ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE 2021; 8:202288. [PMID: 34040788 PMCID: PMC8113892 DOI: 10.1098/rsos.202288] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/16/2020] [Accepted: 04/07/2021] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
The utilization of social cues is usually considered an important adaptation to living in social groups, but recent evidence suggests that social information use may be more prevalent in the animal kingdom than previously thought. However, it is debated whether such information can efficiently diffuse in temporary aggregations of non-grouping individuals where social cohesion does not facilitate information transmission. Here, we provide experimental evidence that a simple social cue, the movement of conspecifics in a structured environment affected individuals' spatial decisions in common frog (Rana temporaria) tadpoles and thereby facilitated the discovery rate of a novel food patch. However, this was true only in those tadpole collectives that consisted solely of untutored individuals. In those collectives where tutors with prior experience with the presented food type were also present, this social effect was negligible most probably due to the difference in activity between naive and tutor individuals. We also showed that the proportion of tadpoles that discovered the food patch was higher in the control than in the tutored collectives, while the proportion of feeding tadpoles was only marginally higher in the latter collectives. Our findings indicate that social information use can influence resource acquisition in temporary aggregations of non-grouping animals, but individual differences in satiety may hinder effective information spread associated with exploitable food patches.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zoltán Tóth
- Department of Zoology, Plant Protection Institute, Centre for Agricultural Research, ELKH, Budapest, Hungary
| | - Boglárka Jaloveczki
- Department of Zoology, Plant Protection Institute, Centre for Agricultural Research, ELKH, Budapest, Hungary
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4
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Individual behavioural traits not social context affects learning about novel objects in archerfish. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 2021. [DOI: 10.1007/s00265-021-02996-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
Abstract
Learning can enable rapid behavioural responses to changing conditions but can depend on the social context and behavioural phenotype of the individual. Learning rates have been linked to consistent individual differences in behavioural traits, especially in situations which require engaging with novelty, but the social environment can also play an important role. The presence of others can modulate the effects of individual behavioural traits and afford access to social information that can reduce the need for ‘risky’ asocial learning. Most studies of social effects on learning are focused on more social species; however, such factors can be important even for less-social animals, including non-grouping or facultatively social species which may still derive benefit from social conditions. Using archerfish, Toxotes chatareus, which exhibit high levels of intra-specific competition and do not show a strong preference for grouping, we explored the effect of social contexts on learning. Individually housed fish were assayed in an ‘open-field’ test and then trained to criterion in a task where fish learnt to shoot a novel cue for a food reward—with a conspecific neighbour visible either during training, outside of training or never (full, partial or no visible presence). Time to learn to shoot the novel cue differed across individuals but not across social context. This suggests that social context does not have a strong effect on learning in this non-obligatory social species; instead, it further highlights the importance that inter-individual variation in behavioural traits can have on learning.
Significance statement
Some individuals learn faster than others. Many factors can affect an animal’s learning rate—for example, its behavioural phenotype may make it more or less likely to engage with novel objects. The social environment can play a big role too—affecting learning directly and modifying the effects of an individual’s traits. Effects of social context on learning mostly come from highly social species, but recent research has focused on less-social animals. Archerfish display high intra-specific competition, and our study suggests that social context has no strong effect on their learning to shoot novel objects for rewards. Our results may have some relevance for social enrichment and welfare of this increasingly studied species, suggesting there are no negative effects of short- to medium-term isolation of this species—at least with regards to behavioural performance and learning tasks.
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Snijders L, Krause S, Tump AN, Breuker M, Ortiz C, Rizzi S, Ramnarine IW, Krause J, Kurvers RHJM. Causal evidence for the adaptive benefits of social foraging in the wild. Commun Biol 2021; 4:94. [PMID: 33473153 PMCID: PMC7817680 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-01597-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/21/2020] [Accepted: 12/14/2020] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
Sociality is a fundamental organizing principle across taxa, thought to come with a suite of adaptive benefits. However, making causal inferences about these adaptive benefits requires experimental manipulation of the social environment, which is rarely feasible in the field. Here we manipulated the number of conspecifics in Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in the wild, and quantified how this affected a key benefit of sociality, social foraging, by investigating several components of foraging success. As adaptive benefits of social foraging may differ between sexes, we studied males and females separately, expecting females, the more social and risk-averse sex in guppies, to benefit more from conspecifics. Conducting over 1600 foraging trials, we found that in both sexes, increasing the number of conspecifics led to faster detection of novel food patches and a higher probability of feeding following detection of the patch, resulting in greater individual resource consumption. The extent of the latter relationship differed between the sexes, with males unexpectedly exhibiting a stronger social benefit. Our study provides rare causal evidence for the adaptive benefits of social foraging in the wild, and highlights that sex differences in sociality do not necessarily imply an unequal ability to profit from the presence of others.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lysanne Snijders
- Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, 12587, Berlin, Germany.
- Behavioural Ecology Group, Wageningen University, 6708 PB, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
| | - Stefan Krause
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, 23562, Lübeck, Germany
| | - Alan N Tump
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195, Berlin, Germany
| | - Michael Breuker
- Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, 23562, Lübeck, Germany
| | - Chente Ortiz
- Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10115, Berlin, Germany
| | - Sofia Rizzi
- Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10115, Berlin, Germany
| | - Indar W Ramnarine
- Department of Life Sciences, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
| | - Jens Krause
- Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, 12587, Berlin, Germany
- Faculty of Life Sciences, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 10115, Berlin, Germany
| | - Ralf H J M Kurvers
- Department of Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, 12587, Berlin, Germany
- Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 14195, Berlin, Germany
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Vega-Trejo R, Boussard A, Wallander L, Estival E, Buechel SD, Kotrschal A, Kolm N. Artificial selection for schooling behaviour and its effects on associative learning abilities. J Exp Biol 2020; 223:jeb235093. [PMID: 33139392 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.235093] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2020] [Accepted: 10/22/2020] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Abstract
The evolution of collective behaviour has been proposed to have important effects on individual cognitive abilities. Yet, in what way they are related remains enigmatic. In this context, the 'distributed cognition' hypothesis suggests that reliance on other group members relaxes selection for individual cognitive abilities. Here, we tested how cognitive processes respond to evolutionary changes in collective motion using replicate lines of guppies (Poecilia reticulata) artificially selected for the degree of schooling behaviour (group polarization) with >15% difference in schooling propensity. We assessed associative learning in females of these selection lines in a series of cognitive assays: colour associative learning, reversal learning, social associative learning, and individual and collective spatial associative learning. We found that control females were faster than polarization-selected females at fulfilling a learning criterion only in the colour associative learning assay, but they were also less likely to reach a learning criterion in the individual spatial associative learning assay. Hence, although testing several cognitive domains, we found weak support for the distributed cognition hypothesis. We propose that any cognitive implications of selection for collective behaviour lie outside of the cognitive abilities included in food-motivated associative learning for visual and spatial cues.
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Affiliation(s)
- Regina Vega-Trejo
- Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Svante Arrhenius väg 18B, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Annika Boussard
- Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Svante Arrhenius väg 18B, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Lotta Wallander
- Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Svante Arrhenius väg 18B, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Elisa Estival
- Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Svante Arrhenius väg 18B, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Séverine D Buechel
- Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Svante Arrhenius väg 18B, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Alexander Kotrschal
- Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Svante Arrhenius väg 18B, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
- Department of Animal Sciences: Behavioural Ecology, Wageningen University & Research, 6708 WD Wageningen, Netherlands
| | - Niclas Kolm
- Department of Zoology, Stockholm University, Svante Arrhenius väg 18B, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden
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