Persistent producer-scrounger relationships in bats

Lee Harten, Yasmin Matalon, Naama Galli, Hagit Navon, Roi Dor, Yossi Yovel

פרסום מחקרי: פרסום בכתב עתמאמרביקורת עמיתים

תקציר

Social foraging theory suggests that group-living animals gain from persistent social bonds, which lead to increased tolerance in competitive foraging and information sharing. Bats are among the most social mammals, often living in colonies of tens to thousands of individuals for dozens of years, yet little is known about their social foraging dynamics. Weobserved three captive bat colonies for over a year, quantifying >13, 000 social foraging interactions.We found that individuals consistently used one of two foraging strategies, either producing (collecting) food themselves or scrounging it directly from the mouth of other individuals. Individual foraging types were consistent over at least 16 months except during the lactation period when females shifted toward producing. Scroungers intentionally selectedwhomto interactwith when socially foraging, thus generating persistent nonrandom social relationshipswith two to three specific producers. These persistent producer-scrounger relationships seem to reduce aggression over time. Finally, scrounging was highly correlated with vigilance, and we hypothesize that vigilant-prone individuals turn to scrounging in thewild to mitigate the risk of landing on a potentially unsafe fruit tree. We find the bat colony to be a rich and dynamic social system, which can serve as amodel to study the role that social foraging plays in the evolution of mammalian sociality. Our results highlight the importance of considering individual tendencies when exploring social behavior patterns of group-living animals. These tendencies further emphasize the necessity of studying social networks over time.

שפה מקוריתאנגלית
מספר המאמרe1603293
כתב עתScience advances
כרך4
מספר גיליון2
מזהי עצם דיגיטלי (DOIs)
סטטוס פרסוםפורסם - פבר׳ 2018
פורסם באופן חיצוניכן

הערה ביבליוגרפית

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Authors, some rights reserved.

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