Developing a social foraging theory

发展社会觅食理论

• 批准号: 122815-2008
• 负责人: Giraldeau, LucAlain
• 金额: $ 4.01万
• 依托单位: Université du Québec à Montréal
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2010-01-01 至 2011-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=451679
• 关键词: Developing; social; foraging; theory

Many animals look for their food in groups and this type of foraging raises a number of important questions that have been at the heart of my research program for the last ten years. When animals forage together, individuals can avoid investing effort in searching for food by waiting and then taking the food found by others. When does it pay to wait and scrounge? What factors make this behavior common or rare? These questions are at the center my research program and can be addressed using a mathematical technique borrowed from economics called game theory. With game theory I can predict how many individuals should scrounge and how many should search. Using use small cage birds I found that depending on circumstances individuals change their investment in one and the other foraging mode. Now I propose to study how an individual's characteristics limit its use of one and the other alternative, the mechanisms it uses to adjust its individual investment in each alternative, how having to look for several types of prey that are difficult to detect affects its use of either tactic. The same principle applies to gathering information, some individuals sample while others get the information by watching them sample, that is they use public information. I propose to use video and audio playback techniques to explore how and when individuals use visual and auditory public information. The spontaneous emergence of individuals that exploit the efforts of others, whether for finding food or collecting information, has been and will continue to be of interest to a wide range of fields, including those that study human behavior (anthropology, economics, psychology). Because exploitation is one of the main barriers to the emergence of cooperation knowing how to control it would provide a major advance of knowledge.

许多动物成群结队地寻找食物，这种觅食方式引发了许多重要问题，这些问题一直是我过去十年研究项目的核心。当动物一起觅食时，个体可以通过等待然后获取其他人找到的食物来避免花费精力寻找食物。什么时候等待和乞讨才值得？ 哪些因素导致这种行为常见或罕见？这些问题是我的研究计划的核心，可以使用从经济学中借用的数学技术（称为博弈论）来解决。通过博弈论，我可以预测有多少人应该搜寻以及有多少人应该搜索。通过使用小笼鸟，我发现根据具体情况，个人会改变对一种或另一种觅食模式的投资。现在我建议研究一个人的特征如何限制其对一种或另一种选择的使用，它用来调整其个人对每种选择的投资的机制，寻找几种难以察觉的猎物如何影响其使用要么战术。同样的原则也适用于收集信息，一些人进行采样，而另一些人通过观察他们的采样来获取信息，即他们使用公共信息。我建议使用视频和音频播放技术来探索个人如何以及何时使用视觉和听觉公共信息。利用他人努力的个体的自发出现，无论是寻找食物还是收集信息，已经并将继续引起广泛领域的兴趣，包括研究人类行为的领域（人类学、经济学、心理学）。因为剥削是合作出现的主要障碍之一，了解如何控制剥削将带来知识的重大进步。