Social foraging and the associated benefits of group-living in Cliff Swallows decrease over 40 years.

ABSTRACT: Animals that feed socially can sometimes better locate prey, often by transferring information about food that is patchy, dense, and temporally and spatially unpredictable. Information transfer is a potential benefit of living in breeding colonies where unsuccessful foragers can more readily locate successful ones and thereby improve feeding efficiency. Most studies on social foraging have been short-term, and how long-term environmental change affects both foraging strategies and the associated benefits of coloniality is generally unknown. In the colonial Cliff Swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota), we examined how social foraging, information transfer, and feeding ecology changed over a 40-year period in western Nebraska. Relative to the 1980's, Cliff Swallows in 2016-2022 were more

SUBMITTER: Brown CR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11469590 | biostudies-literature | 2024 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature