Projet ANR-06-JCJC-0082 – CO-INFO-USE : Context-dependent gathering  integration and use by individuals of complex information for breeding and foraging choices
Programme : Programme "Jeunes chercheuses et jeunes chercheurs" (JCJC) 2006
Année de financement : 2006
Coordinateur du projet : CNRS DELEGATION REGIONALE RHONE AUVERGNE (CNRS DELEGATION REGIONALE RHONE AUVERGNE)
Partenaires : Centre national de la recherche scientifique
Montant : 150000.0 euros
Date de début : 2006
Durée : 36 mois
Résumé : To reduce uncertainty due to spatio-temporal environmental variation, individuals have to gather information allowing them to make optimal decisions. Information gathering and use, and their consequences for evolutionary processes, have recently received increased interest in evolutionary ecology. Individuals can acquire information from many different sources (habitat, conspecifics, personal success and history, etc.), and these sources very likely interact to produce either redundant or conflicting information. Moreover, the meaning and thus the use of a given type of information should differ depending on the individual's prior information and internal characteristics. However, to date, most empirical studies have focused on a single information source, and neglected individual variation in information use, even though theoretical models emphasize the evolutionary relevance of the use of multiple information in a context-dependent way.  Our project aims at experimentally addressing these two critical issues. In a first part of the project, we will focus on the use of multiple simultaneous information by individuals. We will test how individuals integrate different but simultaneous sources of information, depending on whether information are redundant or conflicting, and how they weigh each information source in making subsequent decisions. This goal will be achieved by simultaneously manipulating several sources of information available to individuals and recording individuals' responses. We will also investigate behavioural processes of information gathering. The second part of the project will investigate the integration of past and present information by individuals. We will address how past information modulates the use of current information by individuals for decision-making, involving learning and memorisation mechanisms. This will be done by manipulating individual personal history and prior information, and subsequently testing the use of a given type of current information. The last part of the project will consider the context-dependent use of information by individuals. We will test whether the same information has a different meaning for individuals facing different constraints due to their social status, personal history or internal state. This will be done by manipulating parental effects and individual physiological state, and recording the response of individuals having experienced different internal contexts to the same external information source. The three series of experiments will provide a better overview of the strategies used by individuals to cope with complex spatio-temporal environmental variability. Finally, we will provide a review of studies reporting tests of context-dependent use of multiple and complex information in birds and insects in order to improve the connection between studies of information use on these two biological models, which is currently lacking.  The project is based on a series of field and laboratory experiments on two biological models, a parasitoid hymenoptera (wasp Venturia canescens G.) and a passerine bird (collared flycatcher Ficedula albicollis L.). The methodological approaches used will involve classical field and laboratory work in behavioural and evolutionary ecology (flycatcher: monitoring a breeding population, carrying out experiments in natural conditions, using long-term data on this population; wasp: sampling individuals in the field, breeding populations and carrying out behavioural tests in the laboratory). The project combines these techniques with a series of molecular, biochemical, endocrinological and immunological analyses. Previous experiments have been successfully conducted on both models and have identified single sources of 'personal' and 'external' information used by individuals, that we will manipulate either jointly or in a context-dependent way (wasp: energy status; food availability, host density; flycatcher: personal and local breeding