Data from: The Achilles' heel hypothesis: misinformed keystone individuals impair collective learning and reduce group success
Many animal societies rely on highly influential keystone individuals for proper functioning. When information quality is important for group success, such keystone individuals have the potential to diminish group performance if they possess inaccurate information. Here we test whether information q...
Gespeichert in:
Hauptverfasser: | , , , , , , , , , , |
---|---|
Format: | Dataset |
Sprache: | eng |
Schlagworte: | |
Online-Zugang: | Volltext bestellen |
Tags: |
Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
|
Zusammenfassung: | Many animal societies rely on highly influential keystone individuals for
proper functioning. When information quality is important for group
success, such keystone individuals have the potential to diminish group
performance if they possess inaccurate information. Here we test whether
information quality (accurate or inaccurate) influences collective
outcomes when keystone individuals are the first to acquire it. We trained
keystone or generic individuals to attack or avoid novel stimuli and
implanted these seed individuals within groups of naïve colony-mates. We
subsequently tracked how quickly groups learned about their environment in
situations that matched (accurate information) or mismatched (inaccurate
information) the training of the seed individual. We found that colonies
with just one accurately informed individual were quicker to learn to
attack a novel prey stimulus than colonies with no informed individuals.
However, this effect was no more pronounced when the informed individual
was a keystone individual. In contrast, keystones with inaccurate
information had larger effects than generic individuals with identical
information: groups containing keystones with inaccurate information took
longer to learn to attack/avoid prey/predator stimuli and gained less
weight than groups harboring generic individuals with identical
information. Our results convey that misinformed keystone individuals can
become points of vulnerability for their societies. |
---|---|
DOI: | 10.5061/dryad.8b7k4 |