The ecology and evolution of social learning by predators
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Social learning may help foragers find food, but can cause competition. I first examined the evolution of social learning by predators in predator prey models, examining the ecological implications of three types of social learning: (1) unbiased social learning, in which social learners randomly choose a behavior from their demonstrators, (2) conformist social learning, in which learners are more likely to adopt the behavior used by most demonstrators, and (3) success-biased social learning, in which social learners copy successful demonstrators. Unbiased and conformist social learning caused diet preferences and hence increased competition in the predator population, but success-biased social learning did not. I then examined the evolution of cooperative hunting when transmitted vertically (from parents to offspring) or horizontally between members of the same generation. When rare, cooperative hunting may allow predators to escape competition for prey caught alone, which we call the small prey, and may allow them to access "big prey" which cannot be caught alone, but a lonely cooperator cannot catch food unless it can transmit its behavior to another predator. The cooperative hunting model found that vertical transmission of cooperative hunting is only sufficient for the evolution of cooperative hunting if predators stay near relatives. Otherwise, horizontal cultural transmission is essential for cooperative hunting. Ecological factors such as high availability of big prey and low availability of small prey further selected for cooperative hunting.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Borofsky, Talia Melissa |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Feldman, Marcus |
| Thesis advisor | Feldman, Marcus |
| Thesis advisor | Rosenberg, Noah |
| Thesis advisor | Tuljapurkar, Shripad |
| Degree committee member | Rosenberg, Noah |
| Degree committee member | Tuljapurkar, Shripad |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Biology |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Talia Borofsky. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Biology. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/gw246cg7615 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Talia Melissa Borofsky
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...