Approximating Optimal Behavioural Strategies Down to Rules-of-Thumb: Energy Reserve Changes in Pairs of Social Foragers

Authored by Sean A. Rands

Date Published: 2011-07-12

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0022104

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: No platforms listed

Model Documentation: Other Narrative

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

Functional explanations of behaviour often propose optimal strategies for organisms to follow. These `best' strategies could be difficult to perform given biological constraints such as neural architecture and physiological constraints. Instead, simple heuristics or `rules-of-thumb' that approximate these optimal strategies may instead be performed. From a modelling perspective, rules-of-thumb are also useful tools for considering how group behaviour is shaped by the behaviours of individuals. Using simple rules-of-thumb reduces the complexity of these models, but care needs to be taken to use rules that are biologically relevant. Here, we investigate the similarity between the outputs of a two-player dynamic foraging game (which generated optimal but complex solutions) and a computational simulation of the behaviours of the two members of a foraging pair, who instead followed a rule-of-thumb approximation of the game's output. The original game generated complex results, and we demonstrate here that the simulations following the much-simplified rules-of-thumb also generate complex results, suggesting that the rule-of-thumb was sufficient to make some of the model outcomes unpredictable. There was some agreement between both modelling techniques, but some differences arose - particularly when pair members were not identical in how they gained and lost energy. We argue that exploring how rules-of-thumb perform in comparison to their optimal counterparts is an important exercise for biologically validating the output of agent-based models of group behaviour.

Tags

Individual-based model emergence Decision-Making selfish herd collective behavior dominance Animal groups Fish schools Group-size Aggregations