Data from: Changes in movement characteristics in response to private and social information acquisition of socially foraging fish

To overcome the cost of competition resulting from foraging socially,
individuals may balance their use of private (i.e. acquired from personal
sampling) and social (i.e. acquired by watching other individuals)
information to adjust their foraging strategy accordingly. Reliability of
private information about environmental characteristics, such as the
spatial distribution of prey, is thus likely to affect individual movement
and social interactions. We aimed to investigate how movement
characteristics of foraging individuals changed as they acquired reliable
information about the spatial occurrence of prey in a foraging context. We
allowed guppies (Poecilia reticulata) to develop the reliability of their
private knowledge about prey spatial occurrence by repeatedly testing
shoals in a foraging task under three experimental distributions of prey:
1) aggregated prey forming three patches located in fixed locations, 2)
scattered distribution of prey with random locations, or 3) no prey (used
as control). Using individual time series of spatial coordinates, we
computed a suite of movement variables reflecting search effort, social
proximity and locomotion characteristics during foraging, to examine
changes occurring over repeated trials. Over time, individuals foraging on
either scattered or aggregated prey travelled greater distances, showed an
increasing distance to their closest neighbour and became more stochastic
in their acceleration profile, compared to control individuals. We found
that behaviour changed as private information increased over time, with a
behavioural shift and an increase of collective foraging efficiency
occurring on the third testing day. Social proximity was the major
predictor of foraging success in the absence of prior foraging
information, while search effort became the most important predictors of
foraging success as information increased. In conclusion, we show that
individual movement patterns changed as they acquired private information.
Contrary to our predictions, the spatial distribution of prey did not
affect any of the movement variables of interest.