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37 results for “Group foraging”
A refined method for studying foraging behaviour and body mass in group-housed European starlings.
<p>Datasets and R script corresponding to the following manuscript:</p> <p>A refined method for studying foraging behaviour and body mass in group-housed European starlings.</p> <p>Laboratory experiments on passerine birds have been important for testing hypotheses regarding the effects of environmental variables on the adaptive regulation of body mass. However, previous work in this area has suffered from poor ecological validity and animal welfare due to the requirement to house birds individually in small cages to facilitate behavioural measurement and frequent catching for weighing. Here we describe the social foraging system, a novel technology that permits continuous collection of individual-level data on operant foraging behaviour and body mass from group-housed European starlings (<em>Sturnus vulgaris</em>). We demonstrate rapid acquisition of operant key pecking, followed by foraging and body mass data from two groups of six birds maintained on a fixed-ratio operant schedule under closed economy for 11 consecutive days. Birds gained 6.0 ± 1.2 g (mean ± sd) between dawn and dusk each day and lost an equal amount overnight. Individual daily mass gain trajectories were non-linear, with the rate of gain decelerating between dawn and dusk. Within-bird variation in daily foraging effort (key pecks) positively predicted within-bird variation in dusk mass. However, between-bird variation in mean foraging effort was uncorrelated with between-bird variation in mean mass, potentially indicative of individual differences in daily energy requirements. We conclude that the social foraging system delivers refined data collection and offers potential for improving our understanding of mass regulation in starlings and other species.<strong> </strong></p>
Data for: Manta rays in the Maldives foraging either in groups or solo
<p>Flexibility in animal foraging strategies can increase overall feeding efficiency. For example, group foraging can increase the efficiency of resource exploitation; conversely, solo foraging can reduce intraspecific competition, particularly at low resource densities. The cost-benefit trade-off of such flexibility is likely to differ within and among individuals. Reef manta rays (<em>Mobula alfredi</em>) are large filter-feeding elasmobranchs that often aggregate to feed on ephemeral upwellings of zooplankton. Over three years in the Maldives, we free-dived to film 3106 foraging events involving 343 individually identifiable <em>M. alfredi</em>. Individuals fed either solo or in groups with a clear leader plus between one and eight followers. <em>M. alfredi</em> were significantly more likely to forage in groups than solo at high zooplankton levels, and at certain locations. Both biotic and abiotic factors contributed to variation in group foraging. Within aggregations, individuals foraged in larger groups when more food was available, and when the overall aggregation was relatively small suggesting that foraging in large groups was more beneficial when food was abundant, and/or the costs of intraspecific competition were outweighed by the efficiency resulting from group foraging strategies. Females, the larger sex, were more likely to lead foraging groups than males. The high within-individual variance (over 55%), suggested individuals were unpredictable across all foraging behaviours, thus individual <em>M. alfredi</em> cannot be classified into foraging types or specialists. Instead, each individual was capable of considerable behavioural flexibility, as predicted for a species reliant on spatially and temporally ephemeral resources.</p>
Data from: Ecological tradeoffs drive a power-law relationship between group size and population density in social foragers
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Data for: Manta rays in the Maldives foraging either in groups or solo
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Data from: Direct fitness benefits and kinship of social foraging groups in an Old World tropical babbler
Molecular studies have revealed that social groups composed mainly of non-relatives may be widespread in group-living vertebrates, but the benefits favoring such sociality are not well understood. In the Old World, birds often form conspecific foraging groups that are maintained year-round and offspring usually disperse to other social groups. We tested the hypothesis that non-breeding group members are largely unrelated and gain direct fitness benefits through breeding opportunities (males) and brood parasitism (females) in the tropical grey-throated babbler, Stachyris nigriceps, in Malaysian Borneo. Babblers foraged in social groups containing one or more breeding pairs (median = 8 group members of equal sex ratio), but group members rarely assisted with breeding (9% of 67 breeding pairs had a third helper; exhibiting facultative cooperative breeding). Although 20% of 266 group member dyads were first-order relatives of one or both members of the breeding pairs, 80% were unrelated. Male group members gained direct fitness benefits through extra-pair and extra-group paternity (25% of 73 offspring), which was independent of their relatedness to the breeding pair and increased with decreasing group size. In contrast, females did not gain direct fitness benefits through brood parasitism. The low levels of relatedness and helping in social groups suggest that most group members do not gain indirect fitness benefits by helping to raise unrelated offspring. These findings highlight the importance of examining benefits of sociality for unrelated individuals that largely do not help and broaden the direct fitness benefits of group foraging beyond assumed survival benefits.
Collective foraging: Experimentally-increased competition decreases group performance exploiting a permanent resource
<p><span>Foraging collectively offers advantages, such as access to social information on food locations, but it may also intensify competition for local resources. Social information may be most advantageous during ecologically challenging conditions, when food sources are scarce or unpredictable, which predicts more collective foraging during such conditions. Alternatively, higher within-group competition when resources are scarce might destabilize social groups and reduce collective foraging. </span></p> <p><span>To evaluate these effects, we experimentally decreased the number and predictability of food sources (feeders with <em>ad libitum</em> seeds) available to wild-caught common waxbills (<em>Estrilda astrild</em>) living in a large open-air mesocosm. </span></p> <p><span>Compared to control periods, in the treatment with few food sources competitive aggressiveness at feeders increased, the social network became more fragmented, with on average weaker associations between individuals, and foraging groups became smaller. Foraging groups also spent less time per visit to the feeding area, individuals spent less time at the feeders per group visit and had to make more visits to the feeding area per day, all of which indicate less efficient exploitation of the food sources. These effects were also observed when the number of feeders changed unpredictably across days. </span></p> <p><span>Even though the collective behaviour of waxbills appeared to exacerbate, rather than mitigate, the ecological challenges of reduced or unpredictable food sources, we suggest that, in nature, this increased aggressiveness and fragmentation of the social network may function adaptively as an early trigger to explore alternative foraging locations before local food sources are severely depleted.</span></p>
Data from: Multiple effects of weather on common waxbill group foraging and social behavior
<p>The weather poses challenges for wildlife. Environmental challenges can be responded to at the group level by social animals, but the influence of weather on group behavior is poorly understood. We investigated how the weather affects behavior in a gregarious species by monitoring common waxbills <em>(Estrilda astrild</em>) in a large mesocosm during five years. We found seasonal patterns on collective foraging, aggressiveness, and the structure of the social network, usually showing two cycles per year: one peaking in Spring and a smaller one in late Summer. Controlling for seasonality, we found behavioral changes related to increased energy demands on colder and/or cloudier days, such as more frequent and larger foraging groups that resulted in less structured social networks. Rain and wind disturb movement, and we found that on rainy days foraging group journeys became briefer and more synchronous, resulting in stronger associations between individuals and less structured networks, and that on windy days foraging groups were less frequent, larger, and with more within-group aggression. The results show that the weather has more varied effects than anticipated on ecologically-relevant group behavior. We discuss how such weather-related effects can improve predictions of how social animals will react to environmental changes.</p>
Data from: Field-realistic antidepressant exposure disrupts group foraging dynamics in mosquitofish
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Data from: Multiple effects of weather on common waxbill group foraging and social behavior
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Data from: Urbanization and the temporal patterns of social networks and group foraging behaviours
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Data from: Direct fitness benefits and kinship of social foraging groups in an Old World tropical babbler
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Collective foraging: Experimentally-increased competition decreases group performance exploiting a permanent resource
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Optimal foraging can drive emergent initiator-follower dynamics in social groups
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Data from: Dominance, gender, and season influence food patch use in a group-living, solitary foraging canid
In patchy environments, foragers adopt different strategies to acquire resources depending on their internal state and external physical and social environment: this has important fitness consequences. Linking individual variation in patch use to tangible characteristics is key to understand many higher-level ecological processes. We studied patch use by red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) in the city of Bristol, UK. We placed camera traps in gardens where householders provisioned foxes (patches) to investigate whether 1) foxes discriminated between patches based on food availability, quantified as provisioning frequency (predictability) and the energy value of provisioned food; and 2) individual patch use varied with dominance, gender, and season. Increased frequency of provisioning encouraged more foxes to visit and to stay longer in patches. All foxes visited the most predictable patches first each day, but females were more selective and generally more efficient foragers than males. Females increased foraging effort during cub rearing, whereas males reduced patch use in the dispersal and mating season. Dominants and subordinates shared patches spatiotemporally, possibly facilitated by relatedness and familiarity between group members. However, dominants visited more food patches on their territory, spent more time in predictable patches and fed earlier than subordinates. Subordinates may compensate for competition by visiting patches of lower quality or outside their territory, which is inefficient and risky. Our results demonstrate gender differences in behavioral motivation, show how subordinates forego foraging efficiency to mitigate intra-group competition and reveal how human provisioning influences fox space use in urban areas.
Data from: Personality composition is more important than group size in determining collective foraging behaviour in the wild
Describing the factors that shape collective behaviour is central to our understanding of animal societies. Countless studies have demonstrated an effect of group size in the emergence of collective behaviours, but comparatively few have accounted for the composition/diversity of behavioural phenotypes, which is often conflated with group size. Here, we simultaneously examine the effect of personality composition and group size on nest architecture and collective foraging aggressiveness in the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola. We created colonies of two different sizes (10 or 30 individuals) and four compositions of boldness (all bold, all shy, mixed bold and shy, or average individuals) in the field and then measured their collective behaviour. Larger colonies produced bigger capture webs, while colonies containing a higher proportion of bold individuals responded to and attacked prey more rapidly. The number of attackers during collective foraging was determined jointly by composition and size, although composition had an effect size more than twice that of colony size: our results suggest that colonies of just 10 bold spiders would attack prey with as many attackers as colonies of 110 'average' spiders. Thus, personality composition is a more potent (albeit more cryptic) determinant of collective foraging in these societies.
Data from: Seasonal variation in foraging group size of crab-eating foxes and hoary foxes in the Cerrado biome, Central Brazil
In regions with a pronounced dry season, such as the Cerrado Biome (Brazilian savannah), climate seasonality may affect food availability for canid species and, consequently, their foraging behavior. We investigated seasonal variation in foraging group size of crab-eating foxes (Cerdocyon thous) and hoary foxes (Pseudalopex vetulus) in the Cerrado region for three consecutive years. Data were obtained by direct observations of foraging foxes during spotlight surveys. Both species were sighted foraging individually or in pairs with or without their juvenile offspring. However, crab-eating foxes foraged in pairs more frequently in the wet season and individually more frequently in the dry season whereas hoary foxes foraged mostly individually throughout the year. The higher frequency of solitary foragers in the dry season is possibly a response to the seasonal shortages in the availability of clumped and locally abundant food resources such as fruit and insects, important items in the diet of the crab-eating fox during the wet season. The absence of seasonal variation in foraging group size of the hoary fox may be related to its specialized food habits, since termites predominate in the diet of this species in both seasons.
Social foraging and the associated benefits of group-living in Cliff Swallows decrease over 40 years
<p>Animals that feed socially can sometimes better locate prey, often by transferring information about food that is patchy, dense, and temporally and spatially unpredictable. Information transfer is a potential benefit of living in breeding colonies where unsuccessful foragers can more readily locate successful ones and thereby improve feeding efficiency. Most studies on social foraging have been short-term, and how long-term environmental change affects both foraging strategies and the associated benefits of coloniality is generally unknown. In the colonial Cliff Swallow (<em>Petrochelidon</em> <em>pyrrhonota</em>), we examined how social foraging, information transfer, and feeding ecology changed over a 40-year period in western Nebraska. Relative to the 1980's, Cliff Swallows in 2016–2022 were more likely to forage solitarily or in smaller groups, spent less time foraging, were more successful as solitaries, fed in more variable locations, and engaged less in information transfer at the colony site. The total mass of insects brought back to nestlings per parental visit declined over the study. The diversity of insect families captured increased over time, and some insect taxa dropped out of the diet, although the three most common insect families remained the same among the decades. Nestling Cliff Swallow body mass at 10 days of age and the number of nestlings surviving per nest declined more sharply with colony size in 2015–2022 than in 1984–1991 at sites where the confounding effects of ectoparasites were removed. Adult body mass during provisioning of nestlings was lower in more recent years, but the change did not vary with colony size. The reason(s) for the reduction in social foraging and information transfer over time are unclear, but the consequence is that colonial nesting may no longer offer the same fitness advantages for Cliff Swallows as in the 1980's. The results illustrate flexibility of foraging behavior and dynamic shifts in the potential selective pressures for group-living.</p>
Including population and environmental dynamic heterogeneities in continuum models of collective behaviour with applications to locust foraging and group structure Data and Code
<p>This dataset includes all data used for the creation of "Including dynamic population and environmental heterogeneity in continuum models of collective behaviour with applications to locust foraging and group structure" as well as a snapshot of the code used.<br><br>Each zip should be unzippable and the code should operate with only the contents of the zip file.</p>
Data from: Resource heterogeneity but not inbreeding affects growth and grouping behaviour in socially foraging juvenile cichlid fish
<p>1. Spatial food distribution determines resource profitability, defensibility and encounter rate of foragers. Clumped food distribution can promote aggressiveness and resource monopolisation, in turn increasing within-group variation in food intake and growth. However, the effects of food distribution may depend on foraging strategies. Little is known about the impact of spatial food heterogeneity on growth and grouping behaviour in social foragers in the absence of monopolisation.</p> <p>2. Social foraging is present in many fishes, particularly at early juvenile life stages when fish are especially sensitive to environmental variation. Here, a heterogeneous food distribution may impair foraging success and growth and juveniles may increase sociability to attain social information about food resources.</p> <p>3. We examined the impact of the spatial distribution of food as well as inbreeding on growth and social behaviour in juveniles of the cichlid fish <i>Pelvicachromis pulcher. </i>Inbred individuals often show poorer performance than outbred individuals (inbreeding depression), but inbreeding effects can be environment-dependent. In the experiment, in- and outbred fish were reared in a split-clutch design either under homogeneously distributed or spatially clumped food conditions for eight weeks starting one week after juveniles could actively feed. We documented growth and performed a shoaling assay and a sociality test (choice between a large vs. a small shoal) after six weeks.</p> <p>4. Spatial food distribution did not affect within-group body length variation, but individuals reared under clumped food conditions were smaller. Shoals of the different feeding conditions differed in social behaviour. Shoals of the clumped treatment group showed higher variation in inter-individual distances compared to shoals of the homogeneous treatment group. Furthermore, focal fish of the clumped treatment adjusted their association preference to the position of the groups' largest individual. We did not find significant inbreeding or environment-dependent inbreeding effects regarding growth or social behaviour.</p> <p>5. Our study suggests that a clumped food distribution can impede localisation of food resources and thus growth in juvenile social foragers. Accordingly, in heterogeneous environments, the use of social information may be highly relevant to increase individuals' foraging success potentially explaining orientation on successful foragers, i.e. large individuals. Inter-individual variation in juvenile social behaviour may precede variation in food monopolisation capability and in growth emerging at later life stages.</p>
Field-realistic antidepressant exposure disrupts group foraging dynamics in mosquitofish
<p></p><p> Psychoactive pollutants, such as antidepressants, are increasingly detected in the environment. Mounting evidence suggests that such pollutants can disrupt the behaviour of non-target species. Despite this, few studies have considered how the response of exposed organisms might be mediated by social context. To redress this, we investigated the impacts of two environmentally realistic concentrations of a pervasive antidepressant pollutant, fluoxetine, on foraging behaviour in fish (Gambusia holbrooki), tested individually or in a group. Fluoxetine did not alter behaviour of solitary fish. However, in a group setting, fluoxetine exposure disrupted the frequency of aggressive interactions and food consumption, with observed effects being contingent on both the mean weight of group members and the level of within-group variation in weight. Our results suggest that behavioural tests in social isolation may not accurately predict the environmental risk of chemical pollutants for group-living species and highlight the potential for social context to mediate the effects of psychoactive pollutants in exposed wildlife. </p><p></p>
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Allen Brain Atlas
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OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.