Collective Enhancement of Numerical Acuity by Meritocratic Leadership in Fish

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2014 Apr 3

PMID 24691116

Citations 9

Authors

Angelo Bisazza

Brian Butterworth

Laura Piffer

Bahador Bahrami

Maria Elena Miletto Petrazzini

Christian Agrillo

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

It has been known for more than a century that interacting people can generally achieve more accurate decisions than single individuals. Here we show that interacting guppy fish (Poecilia reticulata) achieve a superior level of numerosity discrimination well beyond the average ability of the isolated individual fish. This enhancement of numerical acuity was observed in dyadic interactions when (Experiment 1) the dyad chose which larger shoal of guppies to join and when (Experiment 2) the dyad chose the higher or the lower numerosity among two decision options after having learned the task individually. Dyadic accuracy and that of the more competent member of each dyad matched closely, supporting the hypothesis that meritocratic leadership arises spontaneously between dyadically interacting fish, rather than the 'many wrongs' principle that has been used to explain group superiority in many species.

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