Collective decision making in guppies: a cross-population comparison study in the wild

Collective cognition has received much attention in recent years but most of the empirical work has focused on comparing individuals and groups within single populations, thereby not addressing evolutionary origins of collective cognition. Here we investigated collective cognition in multiple populations that are subject to different levels of predation. Guppies (Poecilia reticulata) were given a simultaneous choice between an edible and a non-edible stimulus. We found evidence for an improvement in decision accuracy when in groups but only in low-predation guppies. This performance increase was due to a combination of increased private sampling behaviour when in groups (compared to being alone) and social information use. In contrast, high-predation fish did not sample more when in groups, nor used social information; hence did not improve decision-accuracy when in groups. The improvement of groups in foraging accuracy in low but not in high predation sites, suggests that these populat...

集体认知（Collective cognition）近年来受到广泛关注，但大多数实证研究聚焦于单一群体内个体与群体的比较，因此未能探讨集体认知的进化起源。本研究针对面临不同捕食压力的多个种群，探究其集体认知表现。孔雀鱼（Poecilia reticulata）被给予可食用与不可食用刺激物的同时选择任务。研究发现，群体状态下决策准确性有所提升，但这一现象仅存在于低捕食压力环境中的孔雀鱼。这种表现提升源于群体状态下（相较于单独个体）增强的个体采样行为与社会信息利用的共同作用。相比之下，高捕食压力环境中的鱼类在群体中并未增加采样行为，也未利用社会信息，因此其群体决策准确性未得到提升。低捕食压力环境下群体觅食准确性的提升（高捕食压力环境中无此现象）表明，这些种群……