{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,8]],"date-time":"2025-09-08T06:53:30Z","timestamp":1757314410757,"version":"3.40.5"},"reference-count":56,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,2,23]],"date-time":"2021-02-23T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1614038400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100014013","name":"UK Research and Innovation","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["MR\/S032525\/1"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["MR\/S032525\/1"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100014013","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.ploscompbiol.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS Comput Biol"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The collective behaviour of animal and human groups emerges from the individual decisions and actions of their constituent members. Recent research has revealed many ways in which the behaviour of groups can be influenced by differences amongst their constituent individuals. The existence of individual differences that have implications for collective behaviour raises important questions. How are these differences generated and maintained? Are individual differences driven by exogenous factors, or are they a response to the social dilemmas these groups face? Here I consider the classic case of patch selection by foraging agents under conditions of social competition. I introduce a multilevel model wherein the perceptual sensitivities of agents evolve in response to their foraging success or failure over repeated patch selections. This model reveals a bifurcation in the population, creating a class of agents with no perceptual sensitivity. These agents exploit the social environment to avoid the costs of accurate perception, relying on other agents to make fitness rewards insensitive to the choice of foraging patch. This provides a individual-based evolutionary basis for models incorporating perceptual limits that have been proposed to explain observed deviations from the Ideal Free Distribution (IFD) in empirical studies, while showing that the common assumption in such models that agents share identical sensory limits is likely false. Further analysis of the model shows how agents develop perceptual strategic niches in response to environmental variability. The emergence of agents insensitive to reward differences also has implications for societal resource allocation problems, including the use of financial and prediction markets as mechanisms for aggregating collective wisdom.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pcbi.1008734","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,2,23]],"date-time":"2021-02-23T18:34:16Z","timestamp":1614105256000},"page":"e1008734","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pcbi.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Evolution of heterogeneous perceptual limits and indifference in competitive foraging"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"17","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0701-1274","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Richard P.","family":"Mann","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,2,23]]},"reference":[{"issue":"1789","key":"pcbi.1008734.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"20141016","DOI":"10.1098\/rspb.2014.1016","article-title":"Individual-level personality influences social foraging and collective behaviour in wild birds","volume":"281","author":"LM Aplin","year":"2014","journal-title":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences"},{"issue":"18","key":"pcbi.1008734.ref002","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2862","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cub.2017.08.004","article-title":"Consistent individual differences drive collective behavior and group functioning of schooling fish","volume":"27","author":"JW Jolles","year":"2017","journal-title":"Current Biology"},{"issue":"1746","key":"pcbi.1008734.ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"20170038","DOI":"10.1098\/rstb.2017.0038","article-title":"Personality and the collective: bold homing pigeons occupy higher leadership ranks in flocks","volume":"373","author":"T Sasaki","year":"2018","journal-title":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences"},{"issue":"1752","key":"pcbi.1008734.ref004","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"20122564","DOI":"10.1098\/rspb.2012.2564","article-title":"The role of individuality in collective group movement","volume":"280","author":"JE Herbert-Read","year":"2013","journal-title":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences"},{"key":"pcbi.1008734.ref005","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1038\/ncomms3484","article-title":"Group performance is maximized by hierarchical competence distribution","volume":"4","author":"A Zafeiris","year":"2013","journal-title":"Nature Communications"},{"key":"pcbi.1008734.ref006","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"513","DOI":"10.1038\/nature03236","article-title":"Effective leadership and decision-making in animal groups on the move","volume":"433","author":"ID Couzin","year":"2005","journal-title":"Nature"},{"issue":"37","key":"pcbi.1008734.ref007","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"16172","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.1006874107","article-title":"Social interactions, information use, and the evolution of collective migration","volume":"107","author":"V Guttal","year":"2010","journal-title":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences"},{"issue":"19","key":"pcbi.1008734.ref008","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"10388","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.2000840117","article-title":"Collective decision-making by rational agents with differing preferences","volume":"117","author":"RP Mann","year":"2020","journal-title":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences"},{"key":"pcbi.1008734.ref009","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Karamched B, Stickler M, Ott W, Lindner B, Kilpatrick Z, Josic K. 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