Static environments with limited resources select for multiple foraging strategies rather than conformity

Abstract

Abstract Social learning and conformity, or positive frequency‐biased transmission, are important components of the evolution of culture and group identities in animals and humans. Previous theoretical work on the evolution of social learning and conformity when environmental states change found that conformity evolves for a large range of environmental conditions. However, the foraging environment can affect the adaptive benefits of social learning and conformity. Conformity can cause a population to focus mainly on one resource while ignoring other available resources, which can incite competition if the first resource is limited. We study the evolution of social learning and frequency‐biased transmission in a limited‐resource environment using a replicator model of a forager population feeding on two resources in which foragers set their resource preferences during an early learning stage. In sharp contrast with previous models, anti‐conformity, or negative frequency‐biased transmission, rather than conformity, evolves from a population of non‐conformists under most environmental conditions. Numerical simulations suggest that both social learning and conformity cause the foragers to favor one resource over the other even though the resources provide the same benefit to foragers. Resource limitation favors anti‐conformity because anti‐conformity tends to force both resources to be exploited equally. Similarly, depletion of resources selects against social learning. However, increasing social learning is adaptive when independent discovery of foraging cues is difficult because it increases the rate at which individuals learn to find food. Consequently, in an environment with difficult‐to‐learn food cues, increased social learning is more likely to evolve. However, social learning does not emerge from a population of individual learners. Our results show that competition and consumer‐resource interactions can alter the evolutionary course of social learning and transmission bias. As there are many examples of conformity in the animal kingdom, and especially in humans, future studies should explore what extensions of the model would allow conformity to first evolve.