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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on July 13, 2007
Behavioral Ecology 2007 18(5):916-921; doi:10.1093/beheco/arm058
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Wild Carib grackles play a producer–scrounger game

Julie Morand-Ferrona,b, Luc-Alain Giraldeaub and Louis Lefebvrea

a Department of Biology, McGill University, 1205 Avenue Dr Penfield, Montréal, Québec, H3A 1B1 Canada b Université du Québec à Montréal, C.P. 8888 Succursale Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3P8 Canada

Address correspondence to J. Morand-Ferron. E-mail: morand-ferron.julie{at}uqam.ca.


  Abstract

Producer–scrounger (PS) game-theoretical foraging models make predictions about the decision of group-feeding animals either to look for food (produce) or for opportunities to exploit the discoveries of other foragers (scrounge). We report the most complete demonstration to date of the applicability of the PS foraging game in a free-living animal, the Carib grackle (Quiscalus lugubris) of Barbados. As assumed by PS games, the payoffs obtained by scroungers were negatively frequency dependent. Experimentally, increasing the cost of scrounging led to a decrease in the observed proportion of scroungers, whereas raising the cost of producing increased the proportion of scroungers. Observations of marked birds revealed that group-level changes could be brought about by individual flexibility in tactic use. Despite consistent individual differences in tactic use, most birds used both tactics and could alter their use of producing and scrounging when conditions changed. We found no difference in the payoffs obtained by producers and scroungers, suggesting a symmetrical game equilibrium. Our results call for testing the PS foraging game in a broader range of biological systems that include different types of scrounging behavior (e.g., scramble, stealthful, or aggressive scrounging) as well as the exploitation of different phases of food production (e.g., searching, handling).

Key words: Carib grackles (Quiscalus lugubris), field experiments, kleptoparasitism, producer–scrounger games, social foraging theory.

Received 24 January 2007; revised 15 May 2007; accepted 1 June 2007.


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