An asymmetric producer-scrounger game: body size and the social foraging behavior of coho salmon.

ABSTRACT: A tension between cooperation and conflict characterizes the behavioral dynamics of many social species. The foraging benefits of group living include increased efficiency and reduced need for vigilance, but social foraging can also encourage theft of captured prey from conspecifics. The payoffs of stealing prey from others (scrounging) versus capturing prey (producing) may depend not only on the frequency of each foraging strategy in the group but also on an individual's ability to steal. By observing the foraging behavior of juvenile coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), we found that, within a group, relatively smaller coho acted primarily as producers and took longer to handle prey, and were therefore more likely to be targeted by scroungers than relatively larger coho. Further, our obse

SUBMITTER: Phillips JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6405016 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature