Mechanisms of collective learning: how can animal groups improve collective performance when repeating a task?

Abstract

Learning is ubiquitous in animals: individuals can use their experience to fine-tune behaviour and thus to better adapt to the environment during their lifetime. Observations have accumulated that, at the collective level, groups can also use their experience to improve collective performance. Yet, despite apparent simplicity, the links between individual learning capacities and a collective's performance can be extremely complex. Here we propose a centralized and broadly applicable framework to begin classifying this complexity. Focusing principally on groups with stable composition, we first identify three distinct ways through which groups can improve their collective performance when repeating a task: each member learning to better solve the task on its own, members learning about each other to better respond to one another and members learning to improve their complementarity. We show through selected empirical examples, simulations and theoretical treatments that these three categories identify distinct mechanisms with distinct consequences and predictions. These mechanisms extend well beyond current social learning and collective decision-making theories in explaining collective learning. Finally, our approach, definitions and categories help generate new empirical and theoretical research avenues, including charting the expected distribution of collective learning capacities across taxa and its links to social stability and evolution. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Collective behaviour through time’.

A multi-scale review of the dynamics of collective behaviour: from rapid responses to ontogeny and evolution

“…Learning is a prime example of this and Collet et al . [ 183 ] provide a framework for conceptualizing how collective learning might occur in groups. In particular, they propose a number of different mechanisms through which individuals can learn and adjust their behaviour to improve collective performance, providing testable predictions for each.…”

“…Over longer timescales, the developmental trajectory of an individual's behaviour may be shaped by the collective behaviour (as part of the social environment) it experienced in the past. Learning is a prime example of this and Collet et al [183] provide a framework for conceptualizing how collective learning might occur in groups. In particular, they propose a number of different mechanisms through which individuals can learn and adjust their behaviour to improve collective performance, providing testable predictions for each.…”

Two is better than one: innovative ants overcome the nature-inspired cognitive challenge of pupal insertion

“…At the collective level, for instance, social insects, such as bees and ants, generally make precise decisions for selecting their nesting site, sources of food, and solving mazes or transporting large food items as a group, rather than alone (Goss et al, 1989;Beckers et al, 1990;Czaczkes and Ratnicks, 2013;Sasaki et al, 2013;Mukhopadhyay et al, 2019). Hence, there is a need to understand the mechanisms that enhance performance in animal groups, when performing such tasks; some factors, such as learning from other group members or increased complementarity among group members, may contribute to such improvement in task performance (Collet et al, 2023).…”