Copy-when-uncertain: bumblebees rely on social information when rewards are highly variable.

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Ecology
• Animal Cognition
• Social Learning

Background:

• Foraging decisions are crucial for animal survival and reproduction.
• The use of social versus personal information in foraging strategies is a key area of study in behavioral ecology.
• Understanding when animals rely on others versus their own experiences informs theories of social learning and adaptation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To model the adaptive benefits of social and personal information use in foraging.
• To predict conditions favoring social information (high resource variability) versus personal information (low resource variability).
• To experimentally test bumblebee foraging strategies in relation to resource variability and cue type.

Main Methods:

• Development of an agent-based model of social learning to predict optimal information use.
• Experimental testing of bumblebee (Bombus spp.) foraging behavior.
• Comparison of reliance on social cues versus non-social cues under varying resource predictability.

Main Results:

• Agent-based model predicted greater reliance on social information with higher resource variability.
• Bumblebee foragers showed increased use of social information when resources were highly variable.
• In variable environments, bumblebees preferentially used social cues over non-social cues.

Conclusions:

• Bumblebees employ a 'copy-when-uncertain' strategy, prioritizing social information in unpredictable foraging conditions.
• This strategy enhances adaptive foraging by leveraging collective knowledge when individual assessment is difficult.
• Findings contribute to understanding the evolution of social learning and decision-making under environmental uncertainty.