Prey evolve warning defences if predators learn, but how does a population of predators learn?
Social learning is a well-demonstrated method by which animals acquire knowledge about where they should forage, and what they should eat. Much of this work has focussed on learning about tasty food, or receiving positive rewards - but predators may also learn what food to avoid by observing others. If many predators observe the disgust responses of one naive predator tasting a novel prey item, then fewer prey will die.
We are using a mix of experiments in the wild, and experiments with birds in captivity to address whether social information is used by predators to learn about novel warning signals, and how this influences selection and rates of evolution.
Team: Liisa Hämäläinen (University of Macquarie, Sydney, Australia), Johanna Mappes (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), Hannah Rowland (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Germany)
We test effects of information use using great tits as model predators in a Novel World. Image by Rose Thorogood
Mainly funded by a NERC (Natural Environment Research Council UK) fellowship to Rose Thorogood, PhD funding from Finnish Cultural Foundation to Liisa Hämäläinen, and an Academy of Finland grant to the Centre of Excellence in Biological Interactions (Johanna Mappes).
Recent publications:
Hämäläinen L, Mappes J, Rowland HM, Thorogood R. (2019) Social information use about novel aposematic prey is not influenced by a predator's previous experience with toxins. Functional Ecology, 33, 1982-1992. DOI: 10.1111/1365-2435.13395
Thorogood R, Kokko H, Mappes J. (2018) Social transmission of avoidance among predators facilitates the spread of novel prey. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2, 254. DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0418-x
Hämäläinen L, Rowland HM, Mappes J, Thorogood R. (2017) Can video playback provide social information for foraging blue tits?. PeerJ, 5, e3062.