Evolutionary stability of vigilance coordination among social foragers

Rodriguez-Girones, MA; Vasquez, RA

Abstract

Coordination can greatly improve the efficiency of anti-predatory vigilance scans by increasing predator detection for a constant proportion of time spent vigilant. However, it has been rarely found in nature and most studies have detected or assumed independent scanning by group members. In this study, we analysed the functional consequences of the coordinated alternation of vigilance scanning by group foragers. We introduce coordination by assuming that interscan intervals (ISIs) follow a modified gamma distribution. Depending on the parameters of the distribution, successive scans can be evenly spaced (coordinated scanning) or may present a high overlap (uncoordinated scanning). Comparing evolutionarily stable strategies for animals that do not coordinate their scanning with animals that do coordinate their anti-predator behaviour shows that coordination has a marked effect on survival probability. Moreover, the coordinating strategy is quite robust against mutants that scan independently with exponential distributions of ISIs. However, coordination breaks down when animals can continuously adjust their level of coordination by deciding the proportion of time they spend monitoring the behaviour of other group members. In this case, coordination is only evolutionarily stable if it can be very easily achieved.

Más información

Título según WOS: Evolutionary stability of vigilance coordination among social foragers
Título según SCOPUS: Evolutionary stability of vigilance coordination among social foragers
Título de la Revista: PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volumen: 269
Número: 1502
Editorial: ROYAL SOC
Fecha de publicación: 2002
Página de inicio: 1803
Página final: 1810
Idioma: English
URL: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/cgi/doi/10.1098/rspb.2002.2043
DOI:

10.1098/rspb.2002.2043

Notas: ISI, SCOPUS