Seppänen Janne-Tuomas, Forsman Jukka T, Mönkkönen Mikko, Thomson Robert L
Department of Biological and Environmental Science, POB 35, FIN-40014, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
Ecology. 2007 Jul;88(7):1622-33. doi: 10.1890/06-1757.1.
Decision making can be facilitated by observing other individuals faced with the same or similar problem, and recent research suggests that this social information use is a widespread phenomenon. Implications of this are diverse and profound: for example, social information use may trigger cultural evolution, affect distribution and dispersal of populations, and involve intriguing cognitive traits. We emphasize here that social information use is a process consisting of the scenes of (1) event, (2) observation, (3) decision, and (4) consequence, where the initial event is a scene in such a process of another individual. This helps to construct a sound conceptual framework for measuring and studying social information use. Importantly, the potential value of social information is affected by the distance in time, space, and ecology between the initial observation and eventual consequence of a decision. Because negative interactions between individuals (such as direct and apparent competition) also depend on the distance between individuals along these dimensions, the potential value of information and the negative interactions may form a trade-off situation. Optimal solutions to this trade-off can result in adaptively extended social information use, where using information gathered some time ago, some distance away, and from ecologically different individuals is preferred. Conceivably, using information gathered from a heterospecific individual might often be optimal. Many recent studies demonstrate that social information use does occur between species, and the first review of published cases is provided here. Such interaction between species, especially in habitat selection, has important consequences for community ecology and conservation. Adaptively extended social information use may also be an important evolutionary force in guild formation. Complex coevolutionary patterns may result depending on the effect of information use on the provider of information.
观察其他面临相同或相似问题的个体有助于决策，最近的研究表明，这种对社会信息的利用是一种普遍现象。其影响是多样而深远的：例如，对社会信息的利用可能引发文化进化，影响种群的分布和扩散，并涉及有趣的认知特征。我们在此强调，对社会信息的利用是一个由以下场景组成的过程：(1) 事件、(2) 观察、(3) 决策和 (4) 后果，其中初始事件是另一个体在这样一个过程中的场景。这有助于构建一个合理的概念框架来衡量和研究对社会信息的利用。重要的是，社会信息的潜在价值受到决策的初始观察与最终后果之间在时间、空间和生态方面的距离的影响。由于个体之间的负面相互作用（如直接和明显的竞争）也取决于个体在这些维度上的距离，信息的潜在价值和负面相互作用可能形成一种权衡局面。对这种权衡的最优解决方案可能导致适应性地扩展对社会信息的利用，即更倾向于使用在一段时间前、在一定距离外以及来自生态上不同个体那里收集到的信息。可以想象，使用从异种个体收集到的信息往往可能是最优的。最近的许多研究表明，物种之间确实存在对社会信息的利用，本文首次对已发表的案例进行了综述。物种之间的这种相互作用，尤其是在栖息地选择方面，对群落生态学和保护具有重要意义。适应性地扩展对社会信息的利用也可能是群落形成中的一种重要进化力量。根据信息利用对信息提供者的影响，可能会产生复杂的共同进化模式。
