{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,3]],"date-time":"2026-04-03T08:15:33Z","timestamp":1775204133704,"version":"3.50.1"},"update-to":[{"DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pcbi.1012087","type":"new_version","label":"New version","source":"publisher","updated":{"date-parts":[[2024,5,15]],"date-time":"2024-05-15T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1715731200000}}],"reference-count":51,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"5","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,5,3]],"date-time":"2024-05-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1714694400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001659","name":"Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["390523135"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["390523135"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001659","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.ploscompbiol.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS Comput Biol"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Collective dynamics emerge from individual-level decisions, yet we still poorly understand the link between individual-level decision-making processes and collective outcomes in realistic physical systems. Using collective foraging to study the key trade-off between personal and social information use, we present a mechanistic, spatially-explicit agent-based model that combines individual-level evidence accumulation of personal and (visual) social cues with particle-based movement. Under idealized conditions without physical constraints, our mechanistic framework reproduces findings from established probabilistic models, but explains how individual-level decision processes generate collective outcomes in a bottom-up way. In clustered environments, groups performed best if agents reacted strongly to social information, while in uniform environments, individualistic search was most beneficial. Incorporating different real-world physical and perceptual constraints profoundly shaped collective performance, and could even buffer maladaptive herding by facilitating self-organized exploration. 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