Social learning
Social learning is an umbrella term for the learning pathway that
includes transfer of skills, concepts, rules and strategies that occur
in social contexts and can affect individual behavior. Types of social
learning include (i) social facilitation (increased probability of
performing a behavior in the presence of a conspecific), (ii) local
enhancement (an individual’s interest in an object or location mediates
interest/movement by others), and (iii) imitation (novel copying of a
model behavior through observation that results in a reliably similar
outcome) (Visalberghi and Fragaszy 1990). Note that these are distinct
from the transfer of declarative or procedural information via direct
information exchange, such as in bee dancing, to relay information
concerning resource locations
(Leadbeater &
Chittka
2007)
Each type of social learning is relevant to movement ecology. For
example, social facilitation explains movement in bison: individuals
were more likely to travel to a given new location when in a group where
another animal had knowledge of that location
(Sigaudet al. 2017). Local enhancement also occurs in ants where leaders
provide guidance to naïve individuals as to the location of food
resources
(Franks
& Richardson 2006), and in elephants where matriarchs lead herds to
waterholes not known to the rest of the group
(Fishlocket al. 2016). Imitation can be seen in fish, where translocation
experiments demonstrate how naïve individuals learn migration routes
through association with experienced individuals
(Helfman &
Schultz
1984),
as well as in replacement experiments where the long-term re-use of
resting and mating sites can be socially learned rather than selected on
the basis of quality
(Warner
1988).
Individual learning can interact with social learning. For example,
independent exploration allows ants to improve upon the paths they have
learned via social learning through tandem running (Franklin and Franks
2012). Here, independent exploration is the basis for improvement of
route navigation, which can then be distributed within a colony via
‘information cascades.’ More generally, individual learning may be
modulated by associational acquisition, where the options for individual
learning are constrained by the choice of individuals with which an
animal associates
(Fragaszy
& Visalberghi 2004).
Social learning is emphasized though existing social bonds, such as when
it manifests vertically from parent to offspring. For example, elephants
will learn resource locations in complex landscapes through both
vertical and horizontal transmission (Bowell et al. 1996) and
long-term pairing may enhance transmission between maternal-offspring
pairs. For example, paired whales may complete entire migrations
together (Hamilton
& Cooper
2010),
thus enhancing the potential for social learning.
However, social learning does not always confer a net benefit (Giraldeauet al . 2002), and may result in costly strategies of movement and
resource use
(Sigaudet al. 2017). For example, tested alone, adult female guppies
that had shoaled with trained conspecifics as they swam to food used the
same route used by their trained fellows, even if the route taken by the
trained shoal was longer and more energetically costly than were
alternative routes
(Laland
& Williams 1997, Giraldeau et al . 2002).