Economic Decisions and the Individual - An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology - page 82

Further reading
Kacelnik and Bateson (1997) compare risk taking when foragers are faced with variable
amounts of food versus variable delays in obtaining food. Shafir et al . (2008) compare risk-
taking behaviour in honeybees and humans. Marsh et al . (2004) and Pompilio et al . (2006)
show that an individual's energetic state during learning influences foraging choices in
starlings and desert locusts respectively. These studies show how an understanding of
behavioural mechanisms can illuminate a functional analysis in terms of costs and benefits.
Mangel and Clark (1988) and Houston et al . (1988) show how 'dynamic models' can
be used to predict sequences of behaviour in response to changes in an individual's state.
Kendal et al . (2005) discuss the relative merits of social and asocial learning and
Danchin et al . (2004) discuss how the use of public information can lead to cultural
evolution. Taylor et al . (2009, 2010) and Kacelnik (2009) discusses cognition and tool
use in animals while Tebbich and Bshary (2004) is an experimental study of tool use in
the Galapagos woodpecker finch.
Sara Shettleworth's (2010a) topic is a good reference for further studies of social
learning and food storing.
TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Imagine that the observed load sizes in Fig. 3.2c did not give such a good fit to the model's
predictions. What would you do next?
2. How are laboratory experiments on decision making in simple environments useful for
understanding behaviour in the field?
3. Is average net rate of intake a sensible currency for foraging animals?
4. How might one investigate the mechanisms by which animals discriminate between fixed
and variable amounts of food?
5. Why do some species store food while others do not? What might be the advantages of
scatter hoarding? How would you test your hypotheses? Are there other situations in which
you might predict differences in hippocampus size associated with ecological differences?
(see Pravosudov et al ., 2006; Reboreda et al ., 1996).
6. Does tool using in animals show that they are intelligent? (see Taylor et al ., 2009, 2010;
Kacelnik, 2009; Tebbich & Bshary, 2004).
7. Franks & Richardson (2006) suggest that a fourth criterion is needed to recognize teaching,
namely bi-directional feedback between teacher and pupil. Do you agree?