Animal Behaviour, Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland.
Proc Biol Sci. 2011 May 22;278(1711):1482-8. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2010.1739. Epub 2010 Nov 3.
Members of social groups need to coordinate their behaviour when choosing between alternative activities. Consensus decisions enable group members to maintain group cohesion and one way to reach consensus is to rely on quorums. A quorum response is where the probability of an activity change sharply increases with the number of individuals supporting the new activity. Here, we investigated how meerkats (Suricata suricatta) use vocalizations in the context of movement decisions. Moving calls emitted by meerkats increased the speed of the group, with a sharp increase in the probability of changing foraging patch when the number of group members joining the chorus increased from two up to three. These calls had no apparent effect on the group's movement direction. When dominant individuals were involved in the chorus, the group's reaction was not stronger than when only subordinates called. Groups only increased speed in response to playbacks of moving calls from one individual when other group members emitted moving calls as well. The voting mechanism linked to a quorum probably allows meerkat groups to change foraging patches cohesively with increased speed. Such vocal coordination may reflect an aggregation rule linking individual assessment of foraging patch quality to group travel route.
社会群体的成员在选择不同活动时需要协调他们的行为。共识决策使群体成员能够保持群体凝聚力，达成共识的一种方法是依靠法定人数。法定人数响应是指活动变化的概率随着支持新活动的个体数量的增加而急剧增加。在这里，我们研究了猫鼬（Suricata suricatta）在运动决策中如何使用发声。猫鼬发出的移动叫声会加快群体的速度，当加入合唱的群体成员数量从两个增加到三个时，改变觅食斑块的概率会急剧增加。这些叫声对群体的运动方向没有明显影响。当主导个体参与合唱时，群体的反应并不比只有下属个体叫时更强。只有当其他群体成员发出移动叫声时，群体才会对来自一个个体的移动叫声的回放做出增加速度的反应。与法定人数相关的投票机制可能允许猫鼬群体以更快的速度一致地改变觅食斑块。这种发声协调可能反映了一种聚合规则，将个体对觅食斑块质量的评估与群体的行进路线联系起来。
