Harnessing learning biases is essential for applying social learning in conservation

Abstract

Social learning can influence how animals respond to anthropogenic changes in the environment, determining whether animals survive novel threats and exploit novel resources or produce maladaptive behaviour and contribute to human-wildlife conflict. Predicting where social learning will occur and manipulating its use are, therefore, important in conservation, but doing so is not straightforward. Learning is an inherently biased process that has been shaped by natural selection to prioritize important information and facilitate its efficient uptake. In this regard, social learning is no different from other learning processes because it too is shaped by perceptual filters, attentional biases and learning constraints that can differ between habitats, species, individuals and contexts. The biases that constrain social learning are not understood well enough to accurately predict whether or not social learning will occur in many situations, which limits the effective use of social learning in conservation practice. Nevertheless, we argue that by tapping into the biases that guide the social transmission of information, the conservation applications of social learning could be improved. We explore the conservation areas where social learning is highly relevant and link them to biases in the cues and contexts that shape social information use. The resulting synthesis highlights many promising areas for collaboration between the fields and stresses the importance of systematic reviews of the evidence surrounding social learning practices.

Testing social learning of anti-predator responses in juvenile jackdaws: the importance of accounting for levels of agitation

“…First, our results show that taking levels of agitation induced by captivity and/or carry-over effects into account is critical for studies attempting to train animals to respond to novel stimuli. Given the growing emphasis on harnessing social learning to promote adaptive behaviours in conservation contexts [ 40 , 41 ], accounting for agitation will be vital in the design and interpretation of such research. This may be particularly important for species such as corvids that exhibit high levels of neophobia [ 42 , 43 ] and for in situ conservation and wildlife management schemes, where animals are not used to captive conditions.…”

Changes in positive associations among vertebrate predators at South Georgia during winter

“…The net result is that more prey gets captured per group member. Thus, it may be important to conserve groups of species that facilitate one another as units of biodiversity (Greggor et al 2017). Furthermore, communities that are more behaviorally heterogeneous may occupy a greater diversity of niches and could thus be buffered against environmental change (Brown 2013).…”

Animal cultures matter for conservation

“…An important challenge is to identify those populations, or social units, that would most benefit from our proposed approach, and to predict how specific biological processes may influence conservation outcomes (11). Recent studies illustrate how innovative rapid-assessment techniques could aid the identification of distinct cultural units, which may be particularly vulnerable (e.g., as a result of socially learned foraging strategies).…”

“…Similarly, without the benefit of socially inherited knowledge, bighorn sheep and moose translocated to unfamiliar habitats can take generations to master the skill of tracking the seasonal distribution of high-quality forage (10). Social learning can also be exploited to ameliorate human-wildlife conflict, for example, by artificially "seeding" desirable behavior, such as avoidance of particular foods or sites (3,11).…”

“…To improve the efficacy of conservation efforts, we therefore argue that it is critical to consider the interplay between social structure and the transmission of social information. This may be particularly important if different categories of individuals vary in their propensity to innovate, or are more likely to be copied by naïve group members (11). In some cases, populations may be structured into distinct cultural units with differing resource requirements.…”