Be different to be better: the effect of personality on optimal foraging with incomplete knowledge

Abstract

Many animal populations include a diversity of personalities, and these personalities are often linked to foraging strategy. However, it is not always clear why populations should evolve to have this diversity. Indeed, optimal foraging theory typically seeks out a single optimal strategy for individuals in a population. So why do we, in fact, see a variety of strategies existing in a single population? Here, we aim to provide insight into this conundrum by modelling the particular case of foraging seabirds, that forage on patchy prey. These seabirds have only partial knowledge of their environment: they do not know exactly where the next patch will emerge, but they may have some understanding of which locations are more likely to lead to patch emergence than others. Many existing optimal foraging studies assume either complete knowledge (e.g. Marginal Value Theorem) or no knowledge (e.g. Lévy Flight Hypothesis), but here we construct a new modelling approach which incorporates partial knowledge. In our model, different foraging strategies are favoured by different birds along the bold-shy personality continuum, so we can assess the optimality of a personality type. We show that it is optimal to be shy (resp. bold) when living in a population of bold (resp. shy) birds. This observation gives a plausible mechanism behind the emergence of diverse personalities. We also show that environmental degradation is likely to favour shyer birds and cause a decrease in diversity of personality over time.