Social learning and conformity, or positive frequency-biased transmission, are important components of the evolution of culture and group identities in animals and humans. Previous theoretical work on the evolution of social learning and conformity when environmental states change found that conformity evolves for a large range of environmental conditions. However, the foraging environment can affect the adaptive benefits of social learning and conformity. Conformity can cause a population to focus mainly on one resource while ignoring other available resources, which can incite competition if the first resource is limited. We study the evolution of social learning and frequency-biased transmission in a limitedresource environment using a replicator model of a forager population feeding on two resources in which foragers set their resource preferences during an early learning stage. In sharp contrast with previous models, anti-conformity, or negative frequency-biased transmission, rather than conformity, evolves from a population of non-conformists under most environmental conditions. Numerical simulations suggest that both social learning and conformity cause the foragers to favor one resource over the other even though the resources provide the same benefit to foragers. Resource limitation favors anti-conformity because anti-conformity tends to force both resources to be exploited equally. Similarly, depletion of resources selects against social learning. However, increasing social learning is adaptive when independent discovery of foraging cues is difficult because it increases the rate at which individuals learn to find food. Consequently, in an environment with difficult-to-learn food cues, increased social learning is more likely to evolve. However, social learning does not emerge from a population of individual learners. Our results show that competition and consumer-resource interactions can alter the evolutionary course of social learning and transmission bias. As there are many examples of conformity in the animal kingdom, and especially in humans, future studies should explore what extensions of the model would allow conformity to first evolve.

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Although cooperative hunting (CH) is widespread among animals, its benefits are unclear. When rare, CH may allow predators to escape competition and access “big prey” (BP). However, a lone CH predator cannot catch food. Cultural transmission may allow CH to spread fast enough that cooperators can find hunting partners, but competition for BP may increase. We construct a one-predator, two-prey model in which the predators either learn to hunt “small prey” (SP) alone, or learn to hunt BP cooperatively. The predators first learn vertically and then choose partners from whom they learn horizontally with probabilityH. CH predators only catch the BP if their partner is cooperative. We find that without horizontal learning, CH cannot evolve when initially rare. A high probability of horizontal learning, combined with competition for the SP, allow CH to evolve. However, CH can only fix in the predator population if the BP is very abundant. Furthermore, a mutant that increases horizontal learning can invade whenever CH is present but not fixed because horizontal learning allows predators to match their strategies, avoiding the situation in which a cooperator cannot find a partner. While competition for prey is important for determining the degree of CH that evolves, it is not enough for CH to emerge and spread. Horizontal cultural transmission is essential. Future models should explore factors that control how horizontal transmission influences cooperative predation, and vice versa. Lessons from our model may be useful in conservation efforts and wildlife reintroduction programs.