Social information use and the evolution of unresponsiveness in collective systems.

ABSTRACT: Animal groups in nature often display an enhanced collective information-processing capacity. It has been speculated that natural selection will tune this response to be optimal, ensuring that the group is reactive while also being robust to noise. Here, we show that this is unlikely to be the case. By using a simple model of decision-making in a dynamic environment, we find that when individuals behave rationally and are subject to selection based on their accuracy, optimality of collective decision-making is not attained. Instead, individuals overly rely on social information and evolve to be too readily influenced by their neighbours. This is due to a classic evolutionary conflict between individual and collective interest. The result is a sub-optimal system that is poised on the cusp o

SUBMITTER: Torney CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4305405 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature