Modular structure within groups causes information loss but can improve decision accuracy.

ABSTRACT: Many animal groups exhibit signatures of persistent internal modular structure, whereby individuals consistently interact with certain groupmates more than others. In such groups, information relevant to a collective decision may spread unevenly through the group, but how this impacts the quality of the resulting decision is not well understood. Here, we explicitly model modularity within animal groups and examine how it affects the amount of information represented in collective decisions, as well as the accuracy of those decisions. We find that modular structure necessarily causes a loss of information, effectively silencing the input from a fraction of the group. However, the effect of this information loss on collective accuracy depends on the informational environment in which the dec

SUBMITTER: Kao AB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6553586 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature