@article{SchneebergerTaborsky2020,
  author    = {Schneeberger, Karin and Taborsky, Michael},
  title     = {The role of sensory ecology and cognition in social decisions},
  series = {Functional ecology : an official journal of the British Ecological Society},
  volume    = {34},
  journal   = {Functional ecology : an official journal of the British Ecological Society},
  number    = {2},
  publisher = {Wiley},
  address   = {Hoboken},
  issn      = {0269-8463},
  doi       = {10.1111/1365-2435.13488},
  pages     = {302 -- 309},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {1. We generally assume that animals should maximize information acquisition about their environment to make prudent decisions. But this is a naive assumption, as gaining information typically involves costs. <br /> 2. This is especially so in the social context, where interests between interacting partners usually diverge. The arms race involved in mutual assessment is characterized by the attempt to obtain revealing information from a partner while providing only as much information by oneself as is conducive to one's own intentions. <br /> 3. If obtaining information occasions costs in terms of time, energy and risk, animals should be selected to base their decisions on a cost-benefit ratio that takes account of the trade-off between the risk of making wrong choices and the costs involved in information acquisition, processing and use. <br /> 4. In addition, there may be physiological and/or environmental constraints limiting the ability to obtaining, processing and utilizing reliable information. <br /> 5. Here, we discuss recent empirical evidence for the proposition that social decisions are to an important extent based on the costs that result from acquiring, processing, evaluating and storing information. Using examples from different taxa and ecological contexts, we aim at drawing attention to the often neglected costs of information recipience, with emphasis on the potential role of sensory ecology and cognition in social decisions.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{SchneebergerRoederTaborsky2020,
  author    = {Schneeberger, Karin and R{\"o}der, Gregory and Taborsky, Michael},
  title     = {The smell of hunger},
  series = {PLoS biology},
  volume    = {18},
  journal   = {PLoS biology},
  number    = {3},
  publisher = {PLoS},
  address   = {San Fransisco},
  issn      = {1544-9173},
  doi       = {10.1371/journal.pbio.3000628},
  pages     = {13},
  year      = {2020},
  abstract  = {When individuals exchange helpful acts reciprocally, increasing the benefit of the receiver can enhance its propensity to return a favour, as pay-offs are typically correlated in iterated interactions. Therefore, reciprocally cooperating animals should consider the relative benefit for the receiver when deciding to help a conspecific. Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) exchange food reciprocally and thereby take into account both the cost of helping and the potential benefit to the receiver. By using a variant of the sequential iterated prisoner's dilemma paradigm, we show that rats may determine the need of another individual by olfactory cues alone. In an experimental food-exchange task, test subjects were provided with odour cues from hungry or satiated conspecifics located in a different room. Our results show that wild-type Norway rats provide help to a stooge quicker when they receive odour cues from a hungry rather than from a satiated conspecific. Using chemical analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), we identify seven volatile organic compounds that differ in their abundance between hungry and satiated rats. Combined, this "smell of hunger" can apparently serve as a reliable cue of need in reciprocal cooperation, which supports the hypothesis of honest signalling.},
  language  = {en}
}