Resource distributions affect social learning on multiple timescales
| Autor: | Paulien Hogeweg, Daniel J. van der Post, Bas Ursem |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2009 |
| Předmět: |
Self-organization
0106 biological sciences Individual-based model Life Sciences Behavioural Sciences Evolutionary Biology Zoology Process (engineering) Foraging Multiple timescales Biology 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Social learning Cultural inheritance Learning opportunities Diet development Resource (project management) 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences 050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology Social science Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics Original Paper Copying 05 social sciences Behavioral pattern Data science Animal ecology Animal Science and Zoology |
| Zdroj: | Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology |
| ISSN: | 1432-0762 0340-5443 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s00265-009-0771-0 |
| Popis: | We study how learning is shaped by foraging opportunities and self-organizing processes and how this impacts on the effects of “copying what neighbors eat” on multiple timescales. We use an individual-based model with a rich environment, where group foragers learn what to eat. We vary foraging opportunities by changing local variation in resources, studying copying in environments with pure patches, varied patches, and uniform distributed resources. We find that copying can help individuals explore the environment by sharing information, but this depends on how foraging opportunities shape the learning process. Copying has the greatest impact in varied patches, where local resource variation makes learning difficult, but local resource abundance makes copying easy. In contrast, copying is redundant or excessive in pure patches where learning is easy, and mostly ineffective in uniform environments where learning is difficult. Our results reveal that the mediation of copying behavior by individual experience is crucial for the impact of copying. Moreover, we find that the dynamics of social learning at short timescales shapes cultural phenomena. In fact, the integration of learning on short and long timescales generates cumulative cultural improvement in diet. Our results therefore provide insight into how and when such processes can arise. These insights need to be taken into account when considering behavioral patterns in nature. peerReviewed |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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