Ecological and evolutionary consequences of selective interspecific information use

Abstract

The ecology of social information use has been studied in many intra- and interspecific contexts, while the evolutionary consequences of social information use remain less understood. Furthermore, selective social information use, where individuals are discriminative in their decision-making on how to use social information, has been overlooked in interspecific context. In particular, the intentional decision to reject a behavioural trait observed via social information, has gained less attention, although it has recently been shown to occur in various taxa. We develop an individual-based simulation model to explore in which circumstances social information use leads to different coevolutionary outcomes among populations of two species. The initial phenotypes and the balance between costs of competition and benefits of social information use determine whether selection leads to trait divergence, convergence or coevolutionary arms race between two species. Based on existing literature, we propose that selective decisions of individuals, including active rejection, may have far-reaching fitness consequences, potentially leading to similar evolutionary consequences among the populations of the information source and the user as predicted by our model. Overall, we argue that the eco-evolutionary consequences of selective interspecific social information use may be much more prevalent than thus far considered.