Producers and scroungers: A general model and its application to captive flocks of house sparrows

Barnard, C. J.; Sibly, Richard M.

doi:10.1016/s0003-3472(81)80117-0

Cited by 690 publications

(466 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Historically, scientists have tended to assume that individuals should rely on social learning when they can, but recent mathematical analyses reveal that this is incorrect, and that some mixture of social and asocial learning is expected to occur in a changing environment (Boyd and Richerson, 1985;Rogers, 1988;Feldman et al, 1996;Henrich and McElreath, 2003;Laland, 2004;Enquist et al, 2007). This result derives from a trade-off between the benefits of asocial and social learning that, as pointed out by Kameda and Nakanishi (2002) and Laland (2004), is similar to the producer-scrounger dilemma found in social foragers (Barnard and Sibly, 1981;Giraldeau and Caraco, 2000). Asocial learners (information producers) typically incur additional temporal or energetic costs as well as risk of mortality or injury associated with learning from direct interaction with the environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

The evolution of social learning rules: Payoff-biased and frequency-dependent biased transmission

Kendal¹,

Giraldeau²,

Laland³

2009

Journal of Theoretical Biology

160

144

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International audienceHumans and other animals do not use social learning indiscriminately, rather, natural selection has favoured the evolution of social learning rules that make selective use of social learning to acquire relevant information in a changing environment. We present a gene-culture coevolutionary analysis of a small selection of such rules (unbiased social learning, payoff-biased social learning and frequency-dependent biased social learning, including conformism and anti-conformism) in a population of asocial learners where the environment is subject to a constant probability of change to a novel state. We define conditions under which each rule evolves to a genetically-polymorphic equilibrium. We find that payoff-biased social learning may evolve under high levels of environmental variation if the fitness benefit associated with the acquired behaviour is either high or low but not of intermediate value. In contrast, both conformist and anti-conformist biases can become fixed when environment variation is low, whereupon the mean fitness in the population is higher than for a population of asocial learners. Our examination of the population dynamics reveals stable limit cycles under conformist and anti-conformist biases and some highly complex dynamics including chaos. Anti-conformists can out-compete conformists when conditions favour a low equilibrum frequency of the learned behaviour. We conclude that evolution, punctuated by the repeated successful invasion of different social learning rules, should continuously favour a reduction in the equilibrium frequency of asocial learning, and propose that, among competing social learning rules, the dominant rule will be the one that can persist with the lowest frequency of asocial learning

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

The evolution of social learning rules: Payoff-biased and frequency-dependent biased transmission

Kendal¹,

Giraldeau²,

Laland³

2009

Journal of Theoretical Biology

160

144

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…When the complete incompatibility constraint is approximated in these contexts, @ a high negative kequency-dependence of the scrounger's payoff on the frequency of scrounging occurs, ri) scroungers when rare do better than producen, but do worse when common, and (rül a frequency of scrounging exists where both producers and scroungers receive equal payoifs (the SEF). Barnard and Sibly's (1981) finches' use of tactic in the direction predicted by the PS game.…”

Section: Equilibriiam Under Fiee Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental evidence that group foragers can converge on predicted producer–scrounger equilibria

Mottley

Giraldeau

2000

Animal Behaviour

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“…In this study, we explore the consequences of such frequency-dependent effects of learning on the evolution of learning in a common frequencydependent context. We study a situation where animals are engaged in a producer-scrounger (PS) game (Barnard & Sibly 1981;Giraldeau & Dubois 2008). The game is quite general and applies whenever individuals are collectively engaged in searching for hidden resources.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning in a game context: strategy choice by some keeps learning from evolving in others

2010

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Behavioural decisions in a social context commonly have frequency-dependent outcomes and so require analysis using evolutionary game theory. Learning provides a mechanism for tracking changing conditions and it has frequently been predicted to supplant fixed behaviour in shifting environments; yet few studies have examined the evolution of learning specifically in a game-theoretic context. We present a model that examines the evolution of learning in a frequency-dependent context created by a producer -scrounger game, where producers search for their own resources and scroungers usurp the discoveries of producers. We ask whether a learning mutant that can optimize its use of producer and scrounger to local conditions can invade a population of non-learning individuals that play producer and scrounger with fixed probabilities. We find that learning provides an initial advantage but never evolves to fixation. Once a stable equilibrium is attained, the population is always made up of a majority of fixed players and a minority of learning individuals. This result is robust to variation in the initial proportion of fixed individuals, the rate of within-and between-generation environmental change, and population size. Such learning polymorphisms will manifest themselves in a wide range of contexts, providing an important element leading to behavioural syndromes.

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Producers and scroungers: A general model and its application to captive flocks of house sparrows

Cited by 690 publications

References 19 publications

The evolution of social learning rules: Payoff-biased and frequency-dependent biased transmission

The evolution of social learning rules: Payoff-biased and frequency-dependent biased transmission

Experimental evidence that group foragers can converge on predicted producer–scrounger equilibria

Learning in a game context: strategy choice by some keeps learning from evolving in others

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