Virtually all animals are both predators and potential prey for other animals. Inherent in this truism are behavioral "conflicts" such as active feeding vs. minimizing exposure to predators. Behavioral research focused on understanding these conflicts has revealed much about the nature of decision-making by animals. Research on anti-predatory behavior has also yielded considerable insight into the evolution of interactions among species and the workings of large-scale ecological systems. It also promises to shed some light on human behavior, a perspective deserving more attention from researchers. Dr. Lima is studying anti-predatory behavior in a social context. Specifically, his research examines the (very common) group-based systems for the early detection of predatory attack, and the problems that their very existence poses for evolutionary explanations of cooperative behavior. Predator-detection systems based upon the alertness (or vigilance) of individual group members suggest levels of cooperation that would not be expected in supposedly selfish animals. Nevertheless, such behavior is indeed observed. Using a well-characterized bird species, the dark-eyed junco, Dr. Lima will investigate a key, untested assumption underlying current attempts to explain this cooperation: that group members are in some way aware of the vigilance levels of their groupmates. Examining this simple assumption will require a series of behavioral experiments performed under controlled environmental conditions. Preliminary observations suggest that these birds are actually not monitoring the behavior of their flockmates. Should these observations be confirmed experimentally, then a major reassessment of our current understanding of widespread group-based predator-detection systems may well be in order.
