ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e52834. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052834. Epub 2013 Feb 18.
Risk-sensitive adaptive spatial organisation during group movement has been shown to efficiently minimise the risks associated with external ecological threats. Whether animals can draw on such behaviours when confronted with man-made threats is generally less clear. We studied road-crossing in a wild, but habituated, population of meerkats living in the Kalahari Desert, South Africa. We found that dominant females, the core member in meerkat social systems, led groups to the road significantly more often than subordinates, yet were consistently less likely to cross first. Our results suggest that a reshuffling occurs in progression order when meerkat groups reach the road. By employing a simple model of collective movement, we have shown that risk aversion alone may be sufficient to explain this reshuffling, but that the risk aversion of dominant females toward road crossing is significantly higher than that of subordinates. It seems that by not crossing first, dominant females avoid occupying the most risky, exposed locations, such as at the front of the group--a potential selfish strategy that also promotes the long-term stability and hence reproductive output of their family groups. We argue that our findings support the idea that animals can flexibly apply phylogenetically-old behavioural strategies to deal with emerging modern-day problems.
群体运动中的风险敏感自适应空间组织已被证明可以有效地将与外部生态威胁相关的风险降至最低。然而，动物在面对人为威胁时是否能够利用这些行为通常不太清楚。我们研究了生活在南非卡拉哈里沙漠中的野生但已习惯的猫鼬群体的过马路行为。我们发现，处于支配地位的雌性（猫鼬社会系统的核心成员）比下属更频繁地带领群体过马路，但它们过马路的可能性始终较低。我们的研究结果表明，当猫鼬群体到达马路时，它们的行进顺序会发生变化。通过采用集体运动的简单模型，我们已经表明，仅仅是对风险的厌恶就足以解释这种重新排序，但支配地位雌性对过马路的风险厌恶程度明显高于下属。似乎通过不先过马路，占主导地位的雌性避免占据最危险、最暴露的位置，例如在群体的前面——这是一种潜在的自私策略，也促进了它们的家族群体的长期稳定和繁殖产出。我们认为，我们的研究结果支持这样一种观点，即动物可以灵活地应用从进化上继承下来的行为策略来应对新出现的现代问题。
