Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 284, Issue 1852, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2016.2872
Keywords
Parus major; producer-scrounger games; social network analysis; social learning; social foraging; animal personality
Categories
Funding
- Biotechnology and Biosciences Research Council [BB/L006081/1]
- junior research fellowship at St John's College, University of Oxford
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/L006081/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- BBSRC [BB/L006081/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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There has been extensive game-theoretic modelling of conditions leading to equilibria of producer-scrounger dichotomies in groups. However there is a surprising paucity of experimental evidence in wild populations. Here, we examine producer-scrounger games in five subpopulations of birds feeding at a socially learnt foraging task. Over four weeks, a bimodal distribution of producers and scroungers emerged in all areas, with pronounced and consistent individual tactic specialization persisting over 3 years. Tactics were unrelated to exploratory personality, but correlated with latency to contact and learn the foraging task, with the late arrivers and slower learners more likely to adopt the scrounging role. Additionally, the social environment was also important: at the broad scale, larger subpopulations with a higher social density contained proportionally more scroungers, while within subpopulations scroungers tended to be central in the social network and be observed in larger foraging flocks. This study thus provides a rare example of a stable, dimorphic distribution of producer-scrounger tactics in a wild population. It further gives support across multiple scales for a major prediction of social foraging theory; that the frequency of scroungers increases with group size.
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