Breeding colonies as information centers: a reappraisal of information-based hypotheses using the producer--scrounger game

Abstract

One of the most cited hypotheses for the evolutionary advantages of colonial breeding proposes that colonies serve as a place of information exchange about the location of food—the information center hypothesis. Despite its popularity, the hypothesis generated considerable controversy over its predictions and role in the evolution of colonial breeding. As a consequence, the hypothesis still lingers on, despite numerous apparent falsifications from both observational and experimental approaches. The controversy has three roots: the unclear causal direction between coloniality and information center, the unrecognized distinction between colonial breeding and colonial roosting, and the use of an implicit group selectionist argument. Here we try to clarify this controversy by applying an entirely individual selection-based approach, the producer-scrounger game, to the information center hypothesis. Furthermore, we show how other information-based alternatives of the original information center hypothesis (e.g., local enhancement and recruitment center hypotheses) can be included in a common framework. Our model predicts that individuals relying on information transfer at the colony should be rather common in nature. This prediction is essentially unaltered by the inclusion of either local enhancement or recruitment center. On the other hand, the frequency of leading unknowledgeable individuals (the most accepted sign of information center) is expected to be very low. The model indicates that tests of information-based hypotheses should focus on the expected relative frequency of food-searching flights rather than the frequency of leading.