The effect of social facilitation and social dominance on foraging success of budgerigars in an unfamiliar environment

Social foraging is a far more complex phenomenon than individual foraging because of the many social interactions and communications that affect individual behaviour. Social dominance and social learning markedly influence the foraging efficiency of individuals in an unfamiliar environment. This study investigated how these two factors affect the costs and benefits of social foraging. We presented a novel feeding environment to captive budgerigars, Melopsittacus undulatus, and then compared the latency to feeding and number of pecks at the food for social and individual conditions, and for high-, middle-, and low-ranking birds. When in the social condition, birds started foraging faster and pecked more food than in the individual condition. Presumably, this lowered neophobia and enhanced foraging efficiency in the social condition was caused by social facilitation. Low-ranking birds had less resource accessibility in the social condition, probably because they were constrained by the existence of higher-ranking birds when it came to accessing the feeder. Nevertheless, the food intake of low-ranking birds almost equaled that of high- or middle-ranking birds in the social condition. In summary, high status is definitely an advantage, while low status adds some costs to individuals. Nevertheless, low-ranking birds compensate for this through enhanced foraging. It was clear that social foraging provides a great advantage to foragers of each rank, because of social facilitation.