Collective foraging in spatially complex nutritional environments

• Published in: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological sciences Vol. 372; no. 1727; pp. 1 - 11
• Main Authors: Lihoreau, Mathieu, Charleston, Michael A., Senior, Alistair M., Clissold, Fiona J., Raubenheimer, David, Simpson, Stephen J., Buhl, Jerome
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England THE ROYAL SOCIETY 19.08.2017; The Royal Society; The Royal Society Publishing
• Subjects: Animals; Collective Behaviour; Computer simulation; Ecological effects; Ecological monitoring; Feeding Behavior; Food; Forage; Foraging; Individual-Based Model; Invertebrates - physiology; Models, Biological; Nutrient balance; Nutrition; Nutritional ecology; Nutritional Geometry; Social Behavior; Social factors; Social Interactions; Spatial distribution; Spatial Ecology; Vertebrates - physiology; foraging; nutritional geometry; collective behaviour; spatial ecology; individual-based model; social interactions
• ISSN: 0962-8436; 1471-2970; 1471-2970
• DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0238

Nutrition impinges on virtually all aspects of an animal's life, including social interactions. Recent advances in nutritional ecology show how social animals often trade-off individual nutrition and group cohesion when foraging in simplified experimental environments. Here, we explore how the spatial structure of the nutritional landscape influences these complex collective foraging dynamics in ecologically realistic environments. We introduce an individualbased model integrating key concepts of nutritional geometry, collective animal behaviour and spatial ecology to study the nutritional behaviour of animal groups in large heterogeneous environments containing foods with different abundance, patchiness and nutritional composition. Simulations show that the spatial distribution of foods constrains the ability of individuals to balance their nutrient intake, the lowest performance being attained in environments with small isolated patches of nutritionally complementary foods. Social interactions improve individual regulatory performances when food is scarce and clumpy, but not when it is abundant and scattered, suggesting that collective foraging is favoured in some environments only. These social effects are further amplified if foragers adopt flexible search strategies based on their individual nutritional state. Our model provides a conceptual and predictive framework for developing new empirically testable hypotheses in the emerging field of social nutrition. This article is part of the themed issue 'Physiological determinants of social behaviour in animals'.