Data from: The Achilles' heel hypothesis: misinformed keystone individuals impair collective learning and reduce group success

Many animal societies rely on highly influential keystone individuals for proper functioning. When information quality is important for group success, such keystone individuals have the potential to diminish group performance if they possess inaccurate information. Here we test whether information quality (accurate or inaccurate) influences collective outcomes when keystone individuals are the first to acquire it. We trained keystone or generic individuals to attack or avoid novel stimuli and implanted these seed individuals within groups of naïve colony-mates. We subsequently tracked how quickly groups learned about their environment in situations that matched (accurate information) or mismatched (inaccurate information) the training of the seed individual. We found that colonies with just one accurately informed individual were quicker to learn to attack a novel prey stimulus than colonies with no informed individuals. However, this effect was no more pronounced when the informed individual was a keystone individual. In contrast, keystones with inaccurate information had larger effects than generic individuals with identical information: groups containing keystones with inaccurate information took longer to learn to attack/avoid prey/predator stimuli and gained less weight than groups harboring generic individuals with identical information. Our results convey that misinformed keystone individuals can become points of vulnerability for their societies.

诸多动物社会的正常运转，高度依赖具备核心影响力的关键个体（keystone individuals）。当信息质量对群体成功至关重要时，这类关键个体若掌握错误信息，反而可能削弱群体整体表现。本研究旨在验证：当关键个体率先获取信息时，信息质量（准确或错误）是否会影响群体的集体结果。我们先训练关键个体或普通个体，使其对新型刺激物做出攻击或回避行为，随后将这些种子个体植入由未受训练的同巢伙伴组成的群体中。后续我们追踪了群体在两种情境下对环境的学习速度：一是种子个体的训练信息与实际情境相符（即准确信息），二是二者相悖（即错误信息）。研究发现，仅拥有一名掌握准确信息个体的群体，相较于未拥有任何知情个体的群体，能更快学会攻击新型猎物刺激物。但当知情个体为关键个体时，这一优势并未得到显著增强。与之相反，掌握错误信息的关键个体所产生的影响，远大于携带相同错误信息的普通个体：相较于拥有携带相同错误信息普通个体的群体，搭载了掌握错误信息关键个体的群体，学习攻击/回避猎物/捕食者刺激物的速度更慢，且体重增长更少。本研究结果表明，携带错误信息的关键个体，可能成为其所在社会的脆弱性节点。