TY - JOUR A1 - Schneeberger, Karin A1 - Taborsky, Michael T1 - The role of sensory ecology and cognition in social decisions BT - costs of acquiring information matter JF - Functional ecology : an official journal of the British Ecological Society N2 - 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.
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.
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.
4. In addition, there may be physiological and/or environmental constraints limiting the ability to obtaining, processing and utilizing reliable information.
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. KW - behaviour KW - constrains KW - costs KW - decisions KW - signals KW - sociality KW - trade-offs Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.13488 SN - 0269-8463 SN - 1365-2435 VL - 34 IS - 2 SP - 302 EP - 309 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wenz, Leonie A1 - Levermann, Anders A1 - Willner, Sven N. A1 - Otto, Christian A1 - Kuhla, Kilian T1 - Post-Brexit no-trade-deal scenario: short-term consumer benefit at the expense of long-term economic development JF - PLoS ONE N2 - After the United Kingdom has left the European Union it remains unclear whether the two parties can successfully negotiate and sign a trade agreement within the transition period. Ongoing negotiations, practical obstacles and resulting uncertainties make it highly unlikely that economic actors would be fully prepared to a “no-trade-deal” situation. Here we provide an economic shock simulation of the immediate aftermath of such a post-Brexit no-trade-deal scenario by computing the time evolution of more than 1.8 million interactions between more than 6,600 economic actors in the global trade network. We find an abrupt decline in the number of goods produced in the UK and the EU. This sudden output reduction is caused by drops in demand as customers on the respective other side of the Channel incorporate the new trade restriction into their decision-making. As a response, producers reduce prices in order to stimulate demand elsewhere. In the short term consumers benefit from lower prices but production value decreases with potentially severe socio-economic consequences in the longer term. KW - model KW - origins KW - chains KW - impact KW - costs Y1 - 2019 VL - 15 IS - 9 PB - PLOS CY - San Francisco ER - TY - GEN A1 - Wenz, Leonie A1 - Levermann, Anders A1 - Willner, Sven N. A1 - Otto, Christian A1 - Kuhla, Kilian T1 - Post-Brexit no-trade-deal scenario: short-term consumer benefit at the expense of long-term economic development T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - After the United Kingdom has left the European Union it remains unclear whether the two parties can successfully negotiate and sign a trade agreement within the transition period. Ongoing negotiations, practical obstacles and resulting uncertainties make it highly unlikely that economic actors would be fully prepared to a “no-trade-deal” situation. Here we provide an economic shock simulation of the immediate aftermath of such a post-Brexit no-trade-deal scenario by computing the time evolution of more than 1.8 million interactions between more than 6,600 economic actors in the global trade network. We find an abrupt decline in the number of goods produced in the UK and the EU. This sudden output reduction is caused by drops in demand as customers on the respective other side of the Channel incorporate the new trade restriction into their decision-making. As a response, producers reduce prices in order to stimulate demand elsewhere. In the short term consumers benefit from lower prices but production value decreases with potentially severe socio-economic consequences in the longer term. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 1208 KW - model KW - origins KW - chains KW - impact KW - costs Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-525819 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 9 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Breedveld, Merel Cathelijne A1 - Folkertsma, Remco A1 - Eccard, Jana T1 - Rodent mothers increase vigilance behaviour when facing infanticide risk JF - Scientific Reports N2 - Infanticide, the killing of unrelated young, is widespread and frequently driven by sexual conflict. especially in mammals with exclusive maternal care, infanticide by males is common and females suffer fitness costs. Recognizing infanticide risk and adjusting offspring protection accordingly should therefore be adaptive in female mammals. Using a small mammal (Myodes glareolus) in outdoor enclosures, we investigated whether lactating mothers adjust offspring protection, and potential mate search behaviour, in response to different infanticide risk levels. We presented the scent of the litter’s sire or of a stranger male near the female’s nest, and observed female nest presence and movement by radiotracking. While both scents simulated a mating opportunity, they represented lower (sire) and higher (stranger) infanticide risk. compared to the sire treatment, females in the stranger treatment left their nest more often, showed increased activity and stayed closer to the nest, suggesting offspring protection from outside the nest through elevated alertness and vigilance. females with larger litters spent more time investigating scents and used more space in the sire but not in the stranger treatment. Thus, current investment size affected odour inspection and resource acquisition under higher risk. Adjusting nest protection and resource acquisition to infanticide risk could allow mothers to elicit appropriate (fitness-saving) counterstrategies, and thus, may be widespread. KW - vole clethrionomys-glareolus KW - male bank voles KW - maternal aggression KW - reproductive strategies KW - offspring-defense KW - myodes-glareolus KW - predation risk KW - prairie vole KW - recognition KW - costs Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48459-9 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 9 PB - Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature CY - London ER - TY - GEN A1 - Breedveld, Merel Cathelijne A1 - Folkertsma, Remco A1 - Eccard, Jana T1 - Rodent mothers increase vigilance behaviour when facing infanticide risk T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Mathematisch- Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Infanticide, the killing of unrelated young, is widespread and frequently driven by sexual conflict. especially in mammals with exclusive maternal care, infanticide by males is common and females suffer fitness costs. Recognizing infanticide risk and adjusting offspring protection accordingly should therefore be adaptive in female mammals. Using a small mammal (Myodes glareolus) in outdoor enclosures, we investigated whether lactating mothers adjust offspring protection, and potential mate search behaviour, in response to different infanticide risk levels. We presented the scent of the litter’s sire or of a stranger male near the female’s nest, and observed female nest presence and movement by radiotracking. While both scents simulated a mating opportunity, they represented lower (sire) and higher (stranger) infanticide risk. compared to the sire treatment, females in the stranger treatment left their nest more often, showed increased activity and stayed closer to the nest, suggesting offspring protection from outside the nest through elevated alertness and vigilance. females with larger litters spent more time investigating scents and used more space in the sire but not in the stranger treatment. Thus, current investment size affected odour inspection and resource acquisition under higher risk. Adjusting nest protection and resource acquisition to infanticide risk could allow mothers to elicit appropriate (fitness-saving) counterstrategies, and thus, may be widespread. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 766 KW - vole clethrionomys-glareolus KW - male bank voles KW - maternal aggression KW - reproductive strategies KW - offspring-defense KW - myodes-glareolus KW - predation risk KW - prairie vole KW - recognition KW - costs Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-438074 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 766 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Boettle, Markus A1 - Rybski, Diego A1 - Kropp, Jürgen T1 - Quantifying the effect of sea level rise and flood defence BT - a point process perspective on coastal flood damage T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - In contrast to recent advances in projecting sea levels, estimations about the economic impact of sea level rise are vague. Nonetheless, they are of great importance for policy making with regard to adaptation and greenhouse-gas mitigation. Since the damage is mainly caused by extreme events, we propose a stochastic framework to estimate the monetary losses from coastal floods in a confined region. For this purpose, we follow a Peak-over-Threshold approach employing a Poisson point process and the Generalised Pareto Distribution. By considering the effect of sea level rise as well as potential adaptation scenarios on the involved parameters, we are able to study the development of the annual damage. An application to the city of Copenhagen shows that a doubling of losses can be expected from a mean sea level increase of only 11 cm. In general, we find that for varying parameters the expected losses can be well approximated by one of three analytical expressions depending on the extreme value parameters. These findings reveal the complex interplay of the involved parameters and allow conclusions of fundamental relevance. For instance, we show that the damage typically increases faster than the sea level rise itself. This in turn can be of great importance for the assessment of sea level rise impacts on the global scale. Our results are accompanied by an assessment of uncertainty, which reflects the stochastic nature of extreme events. While the absolute value of uncertainty about the flood damage increases with rising mean sea levels, we find that it decreases in relation to the expected damage. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 559 KW - climate-change KW - North-Sea KW - extremes KW - costs KW - 21st-Century KW - adaptation KW - statistics KW - impacts KW - trends KW - cities Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412405 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 559 ER -