Cargando…
How Should Prey Animals Respond to Uncertain Threats?
A prey animal surveying its environment must decide whether there is a dangerous predator present or not. If there is, it may flee. Flight has an associated cost, so the animal should not flee if there is no danger. However, the prey animal cannot know the state of its environment with certainty, an...
Autores principales: | , |
---|---|
Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Research Foundation
2011
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3085230/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21559347 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2011.00020 |
_version_ | 1782202608438476800 |
---|---|
author | Zylberberg, Joel DeWeese, Michael Robert |
author_facet | Zylberberg, Joel DeWeese, Michael Robert |
author_sort | Zylberberg, Joel |
collection | PubMed |
description | A prey animal surveying its environment must decide whether there is a dangerous predator present or not. If there is, it may flee. Flight has an associated cost, so the animal should not flee if there is no danger. However, the prey animal cannot know the state of its environment with certainty, and is thus bound to make some errors. We formulate a probabilistic automaton model of a prey animal's life and use it to compute the optimal escape decision strategy, subject to the animal's uncertainty. The uncertainty is a major factor in determining the decision strategy: only in the presence of uncertainty do economic factors (like mating opportunities lost due to flight) influence the decision. We performed computer simulations and found that in silico populations of animals subject to predation evolve to display the strategies predicted by our model, confirming our choice of objective function for our analytic calculations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first theoretical study of escape decisions to incorporate the effects of uncertainty, and to demonstrate the correctness of the objective function used in the model. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-3085230 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | Frontiers Research Foundation |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-30852302011-05-10 How Should Prey Animals Respond to Uncertain Threats? Zylberberg, Joel DeWeese, Michael Robert Front Comput Neurosci Neuroscience A prey animal surveying its environment must decide whether there is a dangerous predator present or not. If there is, it may flee. Flight has an associated cost, so the animal should not flee if there is no danger. However, the prey animal cannot know the state of its environment with certainty, and is thus bound to make some errors. We formulate a probabilistic automaton model of a prey animal's life and use it to compute the optimal escape decision strategy, subject to the animal's uncertainty. The uncertainty is a major factor in determining the decision strategy: only in the presence of uncertainty do economic factors (like mating opportunities lost due to flight) influence the decision. We performed computer simulations and found that in silico populations of animals subject to predation evolve to display the strategies predicted by our model, confirming our choice of objective function for our analytic calculations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first theoretical study of escape decisions to incorporate the effects of uncertainty, and to demonstrate the correctness of the objective function used in the model. Frontiers Research Foundation 2011-04-25 /pmc/articles/PMC3085230/ /pubmed/21559347 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2011.00020 Text en Copyright © 2011 Zylberberg and DeWeese. http://www.frontiersin.org/licenseagreement This is an open-access article subject to a non-exclusive license between the authors and Frontiers Media SA, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited and other Frontiers conditions are complied with. |
spellingShingle | Neuroscience Zylberberg, Joel DeWeese, Michael Robert How Should Prey Animals Respond to Uncertain Threats? |
title | How Should Prey Animals Respond to Uncertain Threats? |
title_full | How Should Prey Animals Respond to Uncertain Threats? |
title_fullStr | How Should Prey Animals Respond to Uncertain Threats? |
title_full_unstemmed | How Should Prey Animals Respond to Uncertain Threats? |
title_short | How Should Prey Animals Respond to Uncertain Threats? |
title_sort | how should prey animals respond to uncertain threats? |
topic | Neuroscience |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3085230/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21559347 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fncom.2011.00020 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT zylberbergjoel howshouldpreyanimalsrespondtouncertainthreats AT deweesemichaelrobert howshouldpreyanimalsrespondtouncertainthreats |