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Visual social information use in collective foraging
Fig 2
Optimal social information use.
Collective search efficiency E normalized by columns (i.e. relative search efficiency, first row), mean inter-individual distance (
, second row) and average fraction of time agents spent in social relocation state (Tsoc, third row) for different group sizes (NA; columns), environments (x-axis) and social excitability values (ϵw; y-axis). Environments change from more patchy (few but rich patches) on the left to more uniform (many but poor patches) on the right. Agents become more sensitive to social information as we go from bottom to top on the y-axis. The environment shapes the optimal social information use. Social information is valuable when the resource landscape is scarce and patchy. High ϵw in uniform environments causes maladaptive herding, especially in large groups.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012087.g002