Public versus personal information for mate copying in an invertebrate.

Organisms require information to make decisions about fitness-affecting resources, such as mates. Animals may extract "personal information" about potential mates by observing their physical characteristics or extract additional "public information" by observing their mating performance [1]. Mate copying by females [2-6] is a form of public information use that may reduce uncertainty about male quality, allowing more adaptive choices [2].

Textbook cricket goes to the field: the ecological scene of the neuroethological play.

Sensory ecology has recently emerged as a new focus in the study of how organisms acquire and respond to information from and about their environment. Many sensory scientists now routinely explore the physiological basis of sensing, such as vision, chemoreception or echolocation, in an ecological context. By contrast, research on one of the most performing sensors in the animal kingdom, the wind-sensitive escape system of crickets and cockroaches, has failed so far to encompass ecological and evolutionary considerations.

Social learning in noncolonial insects?

Social-information use has generated great interest lately and has been shown to have important implications for the ecology and evolution of species. Learning about predators or predation risk from others may provide low-cost life-saving information and would be expected to have adaptive payoffs in any species where conspecifics are observable and behave differently under predation risk. Yet, social learning and social-information use in general have been largely restricted to vertebrates.

Nine-spined sticklebacks exploit the most reliable source when public and private information conflict.

Social foragers can potentially use private information gained from personal experience and public information gained from observing the foraging success of others to determine the profitability of a foraging patch. We investigated how nine-spined sticklebacks use conflicting public and private information of variable reliability to make foraging decisions. In a first experiment, when private information was reliable, sticklebacks ignored public information and based their foraging decision on private information.

Species difference in adaptive use of public information in sticklebacks.

Animals foraging on variable food sources can refine their estimates of patch quality by monitoring the success of others (i.e. collect 'public information').