Abstract
Animals commonly search for information about available resources to select a breeding or foraging site or a mate. Searching can be costly, which is why even random selection of resources may pay off. However, the evolution of searching effort in relation to key ecological factors and its ecological consequences remain insufficiently understood. We build a model to analyze the evolution of searching effort for resources in relation to key ecological factors; the cost of information acquisition, the cost of competition and the distribution of resource qualities. Evolutionarily stable searching effort decreased with increasing cost of information acquisition, eventually resulting in a random choice of resources. With a very low cost of information acquisition, evolutionarily stable searching effort increased with increasing proportion of low‐quality resources in the available resource distribution, while the opposite was predicted with a higher cost of information acquisition. Cost of competition had only a negligible effect on the evolution of searching effort, except that increasing cost of competition increased investment in information acquisition when a resource distribution was biased towards high‐quality resources. Informed resource selection (above‐zero investment in information acquisition) resulted in skewed distribution of individuals across resources. Consequently, expected fitness became more similar across resources with decreasing cost of information acquisition and associated increase in searching effort, thus approaching the prediction of the classical ideal free distribution (IFD) model stating that individuals distribute themselves so that fitness is invariant across resources. However, we predict a positive correlation between fitness and resource quality with biologically more realistic parameter values, contradicting the IFD model. Costly information acquisition may, thus, explain why IFD is not always found in empirical studies. Generally, our results imply that avoidance of poor choices is more important for the evolution of information acquisition strategies than making the very best choices.
Highlights
Animals use resources, such as food, territories, nest sites, shelters and mates in order to gain fitness, and fitness maximization requires acquisition of information on those resources to facilitate selecting the best resources
A positive correlation between resource quality and fitness better matches the prediction of the ideal despotic distribution (IDD) for resource monopolization by Fretwell and Lucas (1969) than the ideal free distribution (IFD) model, even if individuals are free to choose among resources
Natural selection favors a high effort in information acquisition if high-quality resources are rare, while more costly information
Summary
Animals use resources, such as food, territories, nest sites, shelters and mates in order to gain fitness, and fitness maximization requires acquisition of information on those resources to facilitate selecting the best resources. Information can be gathered directly by personal sampling or indirectly by utilizing the information provided by other individuals. The latter option represents social information use whereby the presence, behavior, decisions and performance of con- and heterospecific individuals (Danchin et al 2004, Seppänen et al 2007) provide cues for decision-making. Information acquisition (personal or social) is a pivotal part of animals’ life and it is used in choosing mates (Janetos 1980, Gibson and Höglund 1992, Uy et al 2001, Byers et al 2005), foraging patches (Giraldeau and Beauchamp 1999, Luttbeg and Langen 2004), offspring rearing sites (Dale et al 2006, Mabry and Stamps 2008, Kivelä et al 2014) and in assessing mortality risk (Emmering and Schmidt 2011, Forsman et al 2013, Thomson et al 2013). We expect that searching effort is a behavioral trait under natural selection, and evolves in relation to ecological conditions, provided that there is heritable variation in it
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