CoMSES Catalog

Frequency-dependent payoffs and sequential decision-making favour consistent tactic use

Authored by Luc-Alain Giraldeau, Frederique Dubois, Denis Reale

Date Published: 2012

DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2011.2342

Sponsors: National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Platforms: No platforms listed

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Flow charts

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

Although natural selection should have favoured individuals capable of adjusting the weight they give to personal and social information according to circumstances, individuals generally differ consistently in their individual weighting of both types of information. Such individual differences are correlated with personality traits, suggesting that personality could directly affect individuals' ability to collect personal or social information. Alternatively, the link between personality and information use could simply emerge as a by-product of the sequential decision-making process in a frequency-dependent context. Indeed, when the gains associated with behavioural options depend on the choices of others, an individual's sequence of arrival could constrain its choice of options leading to the emergence of correlated behaviours. Any factor such as personality that affects decision order could thus be correlated with information use. To test this new explanation, we developed an individual-based model that simulates a group of animals engaged in a game of sequential frequency-dependent decision: a producer-scrounger game. Our results confirm that the sequence of decision, in this case enforced by the order in which animals enter a foraging area, consistently influences their mean tactic use and their individual plasticity, an outcome reminiscent of the correlation reported between personality and social information use.

Frequency-dependent payoffs and sequential decision-making favour consistent tactic use

Abstract

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