Proto-cooperation: group hunting sailfish improve hunting success by alternating attacks on grouping prey

James E Herbert-Read; Pawel Romanczuk; Stefan Krause; Daniel Strömbom; Pierre Couillaud; Paolo Domenici; Ralf H. J. M. Kurvers; Stefano Marras; John Fleng Steffensen; Alexander D. M. Wilson; Jens Krause

doi:10.1098/rspb.2016.1671

Proto-cooperation

Authors:

Herbert-Read, James E ;
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Uppsala University
Romanczuk, Pawel ;
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Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Müggelseedamm 310, Berlin, Germany.
Krause, Stefan ;
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Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, 23562 Lübeck, Germany.
Strömbom, Daniel ;
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Uppsala University
Couillaud, Pierre ;
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Département de la Licence Sciences et Technologies, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 75005 Paris, France.
Domenici, Paolo ;
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IAMC-CNR, Istituto per l'Ambiente Marino Costiero, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Località Sa Mardini, 09170 Torregrande, Oristano, Italy.
Kurvers, Ralf H. J. M. ;
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Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Müggelseedamm 310, Berlin, Germany.
Marras, Stefano ;
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IAMC-CNR, Istituto per l'Ambiente Marino Costiero, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Località Sa Mardini, 09170 Torregrande, Oristano, Italy.
Steffensen, John Fleng ;
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0000-0002-4477-8039
Marine Biology, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Københavns Universitet
Wilson, Alexander D. M. ;
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School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia.
Krause, Jens
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Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Müggelseedamm 310, Berlin, Germany.

Subtitle:

group hunting sailfish improve hunting success by alternating attacks on grouping prey

DOI:

10.1098/rspb.2016.1671

Abstract:

We present evidence of a novel form of group hunting. Individual sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus) alternate attacks with other group members on their schooling prey (Sardinella aurita). While only 24% of attacks result in prey capture, multiple prey are injured in 95% of attacks, resulting in an increase of injured fish in the school with the number of attacks. How quickly prey are captured is positively correlated with the level of injury of the school, suggesting that hunters can benefit from other conspecifics' attacks on the prey. To explore this, we built a mathematical model capturing the dynamics of the hunt. We show that group hunting provides major efficiency gains (prey caught per unit time) for individuals in groups of up to 70 members. We also demonstrate that a free riding strategy, where some individuals wait until the prey are sufficiently injured before attacking, is only beneficial if the cost of attacking is high, and only then when waiting times are short. Our findings provide evidence that cooperative benefits can be realized through the facilitative effects of individuals' hunting actions without spatial coordination of attacks. Such 'proto-cooperation' may be the pre-cursor to more complex group-hunting strategies.

Type:

Journal article

Language:

English

Published in:

Royal Society of London. Proceedings B. Biological Sciences, 2016, Vol 283, Issue 1842

Keywords:

Journal Article

Main Research Area:

Science/technology

Submission year:

2016

ID:

2348612604

Proto-cooperation

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