Familiarity Facilitates Social Learning of Foraging Behaviour in the Guppy

By William T. Swaney, Jeremy Kendal, Hannah Capon, Culum Brown, Kevin N. Laland. 2001

286 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Previous studies have shown that guppies, Poecilia reticulata, can learn the route to a food source by shoaling with knowledgeable conspecifics, and prefer to shoal with experienced foragers and familiar fish. We tested the hypothesis that guppies would learn more effectively from (1) familiar than unfamiliar demonstrators and (2) well-trained than poorly trained demonstrators. Demonstrator fish were given experience in swimming a route to a food source and then introduced into shoals of untrained observer guppies; the spread of this foraging skill was recorded over 15 trials. The demonstrators were either familiar or unfamiliar to the observers and either well trained or poorly trained. Observers performed significantly better when the demonstrators were familiar. The training of the demonstrators made no overall difference to the performance of naive observers. However, whilst observers in shoals exposed to well-trained demonstrators did better initially than those with poorly trained ones, the latter learned the route to the feeder faster. Our results suggest that familiarity may generate a form of directed social learning in guppy shoals, in which fish learn more effectively from familiar conspecifics. An analysis of who follows whom suggests that well-trained demonstrators can provide a ‘tip-off’ as to the location of the hole but poorly trained demonstrators were more likely to be followed. The results suggest that while observers are able to shoal with poorly trained demonstrators, well-trained demonstrators swim the maze route too quickly to be followed, but may attract attention to the maze route.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Global and Planetary Change, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cca56c49ad5cf3fce0f34667c2d56334e21bca87

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

In Global and Planetary Change

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Effective leadership and decision-making in animal groups on the move (2005, background): “However, in many cases, few individuals have pertinent information, such as knowledge about the location of a food sourc”
Social recognition in sticklebacks: the role of direct experience and habitat cues (2005, background): “In addition, familiarity has been shown to enhance social learning in guppies (Poecilia reticulata) (Swaney et al. 2001).”
Social preferences of juvenile lemon sharks, Negaprion brevirostris (2009, background): “Teleost fish research has demonstrated that information is transferred more effectively between familiar individuals (Swaney et al. 2001) and that familiar fish shoals have improved coordination of antipredator behaviour (Chivers et al.”
Social learning strategies (2004, background): “Although fish may not have “friends,” they do express preferences for shoaling with familiar individuals (Griffiths, 2003), and guppies have been reported to acquire foraging information more effectively from familiar than from unfamiliar demonstrators ( Swaney, Kendal, Capon, Brown, & Laland, 2001 ”
Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish (2009, background): “Despite the inherent costs, shoals benefit individuals in terms of antipredator protection, better foraging efficiency and finding mating partners (Pitcher et al., 1982; Magurran, 1990; Swaney et al., 2001).”
Consensus decision making in human crowds (2008, background): “In some cases, it has been shown that very few individuals within a group may actually possess information on, for example, the direction to a resource (ants, Leptothorax albipennis: Franks et al. 2002; honeybees, Apis mellifera: Seeley 2003; golden shiners, Notemigonus crysoleucas (in the laborator”
Social learning of foraging sites and escape routes in wild Trinidadian guppies (2003, background): “Laboratory experiments have revealed that naı̈ve observers can learn a foraging or escape route by shoaling with and hence following demonstrators along the route (Laland & Williams 1997; Lachlan et al. 1998; Swaney et al. 2001; Brown & Laland 2002).”
Kinship, familiarity and social status modulate social learning about “micropredators” (biting flies) in deer mice (2005, background): “Itani 1958; Kawamura 1959; Chou and Richardson 1992; Coussi-Korbel and Fragaszy 1995; Choleris et al. 1997; Swaney et al. 2001 ).”
The effects of habitat- and diet-based cues on association preferences in three-spined sticklebacks (2004, background): “In addition, familiarity has been shown to promote social learning in the guppy ( Swaney et al. 2001 ).”
Social recognition : A top down view of cephalopod behaviour (2006, unknown): “In fish, familiarity was associated with improved shoal cohesion (Chivers et al. 1995), more effective anti-predator behavior, reduced aggression in competitive interactions (Ward et al. 2003), and improved social learning (Swaney et al. 2001).”
Sociality: The Behaviour of Group-Living Animals (2016, background): “…on more profi table activities (e.g. Griffi ths et al. 2004 ; Strodl and Schausberger 2013 ), to increase their foraging effi ciency (Ward and Hart 2005 ; Strodl and Schausberger 2012 ) and to increase the effi ciency of social information transfer and social learning (Swaney et al. 2001 ).”