McMahon, K., Marples, N.M., Spurgin, L.G. et al. (3 more authors) (2024) Social network centrality predicts dietary decisions in a wild bird population. iScience, 27 (5). 109581. ISSN 2589-0042
Abstract
How individuals balance costs and benefits of group living remains central to understanding sociality. In relation to diet, social foraging provides many advantages but also increases competition. Nevertheless, social individuals may offset increased competition by broadening their diet and consuming novel foods. Despite the expected relationships between social behavior and dietary decisions, how sociality shapes individuals’ novel food consumption remains largely untested in natural populations. Here, we use wild great tits to experimentally test how sociality predicts dietary decisions. We show that individuals with more social connections have higher propensity to use novel foods compared to socially peripheral individuals, and this is unrelated to neophobia, observations, and demographic factors. These findings indicate sociable individuals may offset potential costs of competition by foraging more broadly. We discuss how social environments may drive behavioral change in natural populations, and the implications for the causes and consequences of social strategies and dietary decisions.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Zoology; Ecology; Biological Sciences; Health Disparities; Nutrition; Behavioral and Social Science; Prevention; Basic Behavioral and Social Science |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Jul 2024 09:24 |
Last Modified: | 09 Jul 2024 09:24 |
Published Version: | https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109581 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:214046 |
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