Naïve individuals promote collective exploration in homing pigeons.

Gabriele Valentini,Stephen C Pratt,Takao Sasaki,Dora Biro,Sara Imari Walker,Theodore P Pavlic

doi:10.7554/elife.68653

Abstract

Group-living animals that rely on stable foraging or migratory routes can develop behavioural traditions to pass route information down to inexperienced individuals. Striking a balance between exploitation of social information and exploration for better alternatives is essential to prevent the spread of maladaptive traditions. We investigated this balance during cumulative route development in the homing pigeon Columba livia. We quantified information transfer within pairs of birds in a transmission-chain experiment and determined how birds with different levels of experience contributed to the exploration-exploitation trade-off. Newly introduced naïve individuals were initially more likely to initiate exploration than experienced birds, but the pair soon settled into a pattern of alternating leadership with both birds contributing equally. Experimental pairs showed an oscillating pattern of exploration over generations that might facilitate the discovery of more efficient routes. Our results introduce a new perspective on the roles of leadership and information pooling in the context of collective learning.

Highlights

The coordinated motion of groups is a widespread phenomenon observed in multiple taxa (Vicsek and Zafeiris, 2012)
We study collective decision-making and the exploration–exploitation trade-off using an experimental analysis of cumulative route development in homing pigeons conducted by Sasaki and Biro, 2017
Whereas previous evidence of social learning (Sasaki and Biro, 2017) suffices to dismiss the possibility of naïve individuals behaving in a despotic manner (H1), the despotic approach remains a possible option for experienced birds (H2)

Summary

Introduction

The coordinated motion of groups is a widespread phenomenon observed in multiple taxa (Vicsek and Zafeiris, 2012). Among other adaptive advantages, such as increased energetic efficiency and decreased odds of predation (Krause and Ruxton, 2002), collective motion allows group members to increase their sensory and cognitive capacity As is often the case (Hills et al, 2015), behavioural patterns that lead to a search for improvement, whether individually, socially, or over multiple generations, involve an exploration–exploitation trade-off. In navigation problems, both solitary individuals and groups have to balance between exploiting previously acquired information necessary to navigate a known route and exploring for additional information that might allow them to approach the optimal route (Fu and Gray, 2006). How moving collectives compromise between these tasks has received limited attention

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion