Humans use social information to adjust their quorum thresholds adaptively in a simulated predator detection experiment

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

Volumn 68, Issue 3, 2014, Pages 449-456

  Kurvers, Ralf H J M ^a   Wolf, Max ^a   Krause, Jens ^a  

^a LEIBNIZ INSTITUTE OF FRESHWATER ECOLOGY AND INLAND FISHERIES   (Germany)

Author keywords

Decision making; Humans; Quorum thresholds; Social information use

Indexed keywords

EID: 84893939283     PISSN: 03405443     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s00265-013-1659-6     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. Ame JM, Rivault C, Deneubourg JL (2004) Cockroach aggregation based on strain odour recognition. Anim Behav 68: 793-801.
2. Beauchamp G (2010) Determinants of false alarms in staging flocks of semipalmated sandpipers. Behav Ecol 21: 584-587.
3. Beauchamp G, Ruxton GD (2007) False alarms and the evolution of antipredator vigilance. Anim Behav 74: 1199-1206.
4. Bell MBV, Radford AN, Rose R, Wade HM, Ridley AR (2009) The value of constant surveillance in a risky environment. Proc R Soc Lond B 276: 2997-3005.
5. Bonabeau E, Theraulaz G, Deneubourg JL, Aron S, Camazine S (1997) Self-organization in social insects. Trends Ecol Evol 12: 188-193.
6. Chittka L, Skorupski P, Raine NE (2009) Speed-accuracy tradeoffs in animal decision making. Trends Ecol Evol 24: 400-407.
7. Conradt L (2012) Models in animal collective decision-making: information uncertainty and conflicting preferences. Interf Focus 2: 226-240.
8. Conradt L, Roper TJ (2009) Conflicts of interest and the evolution of decision sharing. Philos Trans R Soc B 364: 807-819.
9. Couzin ID, Krause J, Franks NR, Levin SA (2005) Effective leadership and decision-making in animal groups on the move. Nature 433: 513-516.
10. Couzin ID, Ioannou CC, Demirel G, Gross T, Torney CJ, Hartnett A, Conradt L, Levin SA, Leonard NE (2011) Uninformed individuals promote democratic consensus in animal groups. Science 334: 1578-1580.
11. Dall SRX, Giraldeau LA, Olsson O, McNamara JM, Stephens DW (2005) Information and its use by animals in evolutionary ecology. Trends Ecol Evol 20: 187-193.
12. Danchin E, Giraldeau LA, Valone TJ, Wagner RH (2004) Public information: from nosy neighbors to cultural evolution. Science 305: 487-491.
13. Deneubourg JL, Goss S (1989) Collective patterns and decision-making. Ethol Ecol Evol 1: 295-311.
14. Dingemanse NJ, Wolf M (2013) Between-individual differences in behavioural plasticity within populations: causes and consequences. Anim Behav 85: 1031-1039.
15. Dornhaus A, Franks NR (2006) Colony size affects collective decision-making in the ant Temnothorax albipennis. Insect Soc 53: 420-427.
16. Dornhaus A, Franks NR, Hawkins RM, Shere HNS (2004) Ants move to improve: colonies of Leptothorax albipennis emigrate whenever they find a superior nest site. Anim Behav 67: 959-963.
17. Dyer JRG, Ioannou CC, Morrell LJ, Croft DP, Couzin ID, Waters DA, Krause J (2008) Consensus decision making in human crowds. Anim Behav 75: 461-470.
18. Franks NR, Pratt SC, Mallon EB, Britton NF, Sumpter DJT (2002) Information flow, opinion polling and collective intelligence in house-hunting social insects. Philos Trans R Soc B 357: 1567-1583.
19. Franks NR, Dornhaus A, Fitzsimmons JP, Stevens M (2003) Speed versus accuracy in collective decision making. Proc R Soc Lond B 270: 2457-2463.
20. Franks NR, Dornhaus A, Best CS, Jones EL (2006) Decision making by small and large house-hunting ant colonies: one size fits all. Anim Behav 72: 611-616.
21. Franks NR, Dechaume-Moncharmont FX, Hanmore E, Reynolds JK (2009) Speed versus accuracy in decision-making ants: expediting politics and policy implementation. Philos Trans R Soc B 364: 845-852.
22. Hamel JA, Cocroft RB (2012) Negative feedback from maternal signals reduces false alarms by collectively signalling offspring. Proc R Soc Lond B 279: 3820-3826.
23. Harcourt JL, Ang TZ, Sweetman G, Johnstone RA, Manica A (2009) Social feedback and the emergence of leaders and followers. Curr Biol 19: 248-252.
24. Hastie R, Penrod SD, Pennington N (1983) Inside the jury. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
25. Holland PW (1986) Statistics and causal inference. J Am Stat Assoc 81: 945-960.
26. Hoogland JL (1981) The evolution of coloniality in white-tailed and black-tailed prairie dogs (Sciuridae: Cynomys leucurus and C. ludovicianus). Ecology 62: 252-272.
27. Kameda T, Wisdom T, Toyokawa W, Inukai K (2012) Is consensus-seeking unique to humans? A selective review of animal group decision-making and its implications for (human) social psychology. Group Process Integr 15: 673-689.
28. Kerr NL, Tindale RS (2004) Group performance and decision making. Annu Rev Psychol 55: 623-655.
29. King AJ, Cowlishaw G (2007) When to use social information: the advantage of large group size in individual decision making. Biol Lett 3: 137-139.
30. Krause J, Ruxton GD, Krause S (2010) Swarm intelligence in animals and humans. Trends Ecol Evol 25: 28-34.
31. Krause J, Winfield AFT, Deneubourg JL (2011) Interactive robots in experimental biology. Trends Ecol Evol 26: 369-375.
32. Kurvers RHJM, Eijkelenkamp B, van Oers K, van Lith B, van Wieren SE, Ydenberg RC, Prins HHT (2009) Personality differences explain leadership in barnacle geese. Anim Behav 78: 447-453.
33. Kurvers RHJM, Prins HHT, van Wieren SE, van Oers K, Nolet BA, Ydenberg RC (2010a) The effect of personality on social foraging: shy barnacle geese scrounge more. Proc R Soc Lond B 277: 601-608.
34. Kurvers RHJM, van Oers K, Nolet BA, Jonker RM, van Wieren SE, Prins HHT, Ydenberg RC (2010b) Personality predicts the use of social information. Ecol Lett 13: 829-837.
35. Lima SL (1995) Collective detection of predatory attack by social foragers: fraught with ambiguity? Anim Behav 50: 1097-1108.
36. Macmillan NA, Creelman CD (2005) Detection theory: a user's guide, 2nd edn. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah.
37. Manel S, Williams HC, Ormerod SJ (2001) Evaluating presence-absence models in ecology: the need to account for prevalence. J Appl Ecol 38: 921-931.
38. Pratt SC, Sumpter DJT (2006) A tunable algorithm for collective decision-making. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 103: 15906-15910.
39. Pratt SC, Mallon EB, Sumpter DJT, Franks NR (2002) Quorum sensing, recruitment, and collective decision-making during colony emigration by the ant Leptothorax albipennis. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 52: 117-127.
40. Proctor CJ, Broom M, Ruxton GD (2001) Modelling antipredator vigilance and flight response in group foragers when warning signals are ambiguous. J Theor Biol 211: 409-417.
41. Roberts G (1997) How many birds does it take to put a flock to flight? Anim Behav 54: 1517-1522.
42. Seeley TD, Visscher PK (2004) Quorum sensing during nest-site selection by honeybee swarms. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 56: 594-601.
43. Sirot E (2006) Social information, antipredatory vigilance and flight in bird flocks. Anim Behav 72: 373-382.
44. Sirot E (2012) Negotiation may lead selfish individuals to cooperate: the example of the collective vigilance game. Proc R Soc Lond B 279: 2862-2867.
45. Sirot E, Touzalin F (2009) Coordination and synchronization of vigilance in groups of prey: the role of collective detection and predators' preference for stragglers. Am Nat 173: 47-59.
46. Sumpter DJT, Pratt SC (2009) Quorum responses and consensus decision making. Philos Trans R Soc B 364: 743-753.
47. Sumpter DJT, Zabzina N, Nicolis SC (2012) Six predictions about the decision making of animal and human groups. Manag Decis Econ 33: 295-309.
48. Swets JA (1988) Measuring the accuracy of diagnostic systems. Science 240: 1285-1293.
49. Valone TJ (2007) From eavesdropping on performance to copying the behavior of others: a review of public information use. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 62: 1-14.
50. Visscher PK (2007) Group decision making in nest-site selection among social insects. Annu Rev Entomol 52: 255-275.
51. Ward AJW, Sumpter DJT, Couzin ID, Hart PJB, Krause J (2008) Quorum decision-making facilitates information transfer in fish shoals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 105: 6948-6953.
52. Ward AJW, Herbert-Read JE, Sumpter DJT, Krause J (2011) Fast and accurate decisions through collective vigilance in fish shoals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 108: 2312-2315.
53. Wiley RH (1994) Errors, exaggeration, and deception in animal communication. In: Real L (ed) Behavioral mechanisms in ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
54. Wolf M, McNamara JM (2013) Adaptive between-individual differences in social competence. Trends Ecol Evol 28: 253-254.
55. Wolf M, Kurvers RHJM, Ward AJW, Krause S, Krause J (2013) Accurate decisions in an uncertain world: collective cognition increases true positives while decreasing false positives. Proc R Soc Lond B 280: 20122777.