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Conradt, L. |
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Title |
Models in animal collective decision-making: information uncertainty and conflicting preferences |
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2012 |
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Interface Focus |
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2 |
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2 |
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226-240 |
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Collective decision-making plays a central part in the lives of many social animals. Two important factors that influence collective decision-making are information uncertainty and conflicting preferences. Here, I bring together, and briefly review, basic models relating to animal collective decision-making in situations with information uncertainty and in situations with conflicting preferences between group members. The intention is to give an overview about the different types of modelling approaches that have been employed and the questions that they address and raise. Despite the use of a wide range of different modelling techniques, results show a coherent picture, as follows. Relatively simple cognitive mechanisms can lead to effective information pooling. Groups often face a trade-off between decision accuracy and speed, but appropriate fine-tuning of behavioural parameters could achieve high accuracy while maintaining reasonable speed. The right balance of interdependence and independence between animals is crucial for maintaining group cohesion and achieving high decision accuracy. In conflict situations, a high degree of decision-sharing between individuals is predicted, as well as transient leadership and leadership according to needs and physiological status. Animals often face crucial trade-offs between maintaining group cohesion and influencing the decision outcome in their own favour. Despite the great progress that has been made, there remains one big gap in our knowledge: how do animals make collective decisions in situations when information uncertainty and conflict of interest operate simultaneously? |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5653 |
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Conradt, L.; Krause, J.; Couzin, I. D.; Roper, T. J. |
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Title |
“Leading According to Need” in Self-Organizing Groups |
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Journal Article |
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2009 |
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The American Naturalist |
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Am Nat |
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173 |
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3 |
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304-312 |
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behavioral synchrony, collective group decisions, democracy and egalitarianism in animals, public goods experiments, sexual segregation, social choice theory |
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Self‐organizing‐system approaches have shed significant light on the mechanisms underlying synchronized movements by large groups of animals, such as shoals of fish, flocks of birds, or herds of ungulates. However, these approaches rarely consider conflicts of interest between group members, although there is reason to suppose that such conflicts are commonplace. Here, we demonstrate that, where conflicts exist, individual members of self‐organizing groups can, in principle, increase their influence on group movement destination by strategically changing simple behavioral parameters (namely, movement speed, assertiveness, and social attraction range). However, they do so at the expense of an increased risk of group fragmentation and a decrease in movement efficiency. We argue that the resulting trade‐offs faced by each group member render it likely that group movements are led by those members for which reaching a particular destination is most crucial or group cohesion is least important. We term this phenomenon leading according to “need” or “social indifference,” respectively. Both kinds of leading can occur in the absence of knowledge of or communication about the needs of other group members and without the assumption of altruistic cooperation. We discuss our findings in the light of observations on fish and other vertebrates. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5121 |
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Conradt, L.; Roper, T.J. |
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Title |
Deciding group movements: Where and when to go |
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2010 |
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Behavioural Processes |
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Behav. Process. |
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84 |
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3 |
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675-677 |
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activity synchronisation; aggregation rules; collective decisions; democracy; group decisions; sexual segregation; decision sharing; social choice theory |
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A group of animals can only move cohesively, if group members “somehow” reach a consensus about the timing (e.g., start) and the spatial direction/destination of the collective movement. Timing and spatial decisions usually differ with respect to the continuity of their cost/benefit distribution in such a way that, in principle, compromises are much more feasible in timing decision (e.g. median preferred time) than they are in spatial decisions. The consequence is that consensus costs connected to collective timing decisions are usually less skewed amongst group members than are consensus costs connected to spatial decisions. This, in turn, influences the evolution of decision sharing: sharing in timing decisions is most likely to evolve when conflicts are high relative to group cohesion benefits, while sharing in spatial decisions is most likely to evolve in the opposite situation. We discuss the implications of these differences for the study of collective movement decisions. |
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0376-6357 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5086 |
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Author |
Conradt, L.; Roper, T.J. |
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Title |
Consensus decision making in animals |
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2005 |
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Trends in Ecology & Evolution (Personal Edition) |
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Trends Ecol Evol |
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20 |
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8 |
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449-456 |
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Individual animals routinely face decisions that are crucial to their fitness. In social species, however, many of these decisions need to be made jointly with other group members because the group will split apart unless a consensus is reached. Here, we review empirical and theoretical studies of consensus decision making, and place them in a coherent framework. In particular, we classify consensus decisions according to the degree to which they involve conflict of interest between group members, and whether they involve either local or global communication; we ask, for different categories of consensus decision, who makes the decision, what are the underlying mechanisms, and what are the functional consequences. We conclude that consensus decision making is common in non-human animals, and that cooperation between group members in the decision-making process is likely to be the norm, even when the decision involves significant conflict of interest. |
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Department of Biology and Environmental Science, John Maynard Smith Building, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, BN1 9QG. L.Conradt@sussex.ac.uk |
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0169-5347 |
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PMID:16701416 |
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no |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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4802 |
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Author |
Conradt, L.; Roper, T.J. |
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Title |
Group decision-making in animals |
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Journal Article |
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Year |
2003 |
Publication |
Nature |
Abbreviated Journal |
Nature |
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Volume |
421 |
Issue |
6919 |
Pages |
155-158 |
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Keywords |
Animals; Behavior, Animal/*physiology; *Decision Making; Democracy; Group Processes; *Models, Biological; Population Density; Social Behavior |
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Groups of animals often need to make communal decisions, for example about which activities to perform, when to perform them and which direction to travel in; however, little is known about how they do so. Here, we model the fitness consequences of two possible decision-making mechanisms: 'despotism' and 'democracy'. We show that under most conditions, the costs to subordinate group members, and to the group as a whole, are considerably higher for despotic than for democratic decisions. Even when the despot is the most experienced group member, it only pays other members to accept its decision when group size is small and the difference in information is large. Democratic decisions are more beneficial primarily because they tend to produce less extreme decisions, rather than because each individual has an influence on the decision per se. Our model suggests that democracy should be widespread and makes quantitative, testable predictions about group decision-making in non-humans. |
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School of Biological Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK. l.conradt@sussex.ac.uk |
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0028-0836 |
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PMID:12520299 |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5136 |
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Author |
Lusseau, D.; Conradt, L. |
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Title |
The emergence of unshared consensus decisions in bottlenose dolphins |
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Journal Article |
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2009 |
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Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology |
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Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. |
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63 |
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7 |
Pages |
1067-1077 |
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Behavioral ecology – Decision-making process – Bottlenose dolphin – Group living |
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Abstract Unshared consensus decision-making processes, in which one or a small number of individuals make the decision for the rest of a group, are rarely documented. However, this mechanism can be beneficial for all group members when one individual has greater knowledge about the benefits of the decision than other group members. Such decisions are reached during certain activity shifts within the population of bottlenose dolphins residing in Doubtful Sound, New Zealand. Behavioral signals are performed by one individual and seem to precipitate shifts in the behavior of the entire group: males perform side flops and initiate traveling bouts while females perform upside-down lobtails and terminate traveling bouts. However, these signals are not observed at all activity shifts. We find that, while side flops were performed by males that have greater knowledge than other male group members, this was not the case for females performing upside-down lobtails. The reason for this could have been that a generally high knowledge about the optimal timing of travel terminations rendered it less important which individual female made the decision. |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
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5109 |
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