Fig. 3

Exploration rates. a Evolved exploration rates. SOL: solitary; G _LE : groups with only local enhancement; G _SE : groups with stimulus enhancement; G _OL : groups with observational learning. Data from ancestors between year 850 and 950 from 10 simulations per condition. Box plots show the minimum, 1st quartile, median, 3rd quartile and maximum of means of 10 simulations. b Hypothetical scenarios with respect to group-level and within-group optimal exploration rates. Solid line: fitness with respect to group-level variation in exploration rates, where the black dot reflects the optimal ‘cooperative’ exploration rate for all foragers in a group; Other lines: fitness with respect to within-group (i.e. individual-level) variation in exploration rates, where the black dot reflects the optimal ‘selfish’ exploration rate for individuals within a group; Dashed line: Information parasitism scenario where the individual-level optimum is below the group-level optimum, and hence individuals have an incentive to explore less than other members of the group; Dotted line: Hypothetical opposite to information parasitism where the within-group optimum is above the group-level optimum and individuals have an incentive to explore more than other group-members; Dot-dashed line: Neutral scenario where there is no real individual-level optimum and no incentive to explore less or more than other group-members. The latter two scenarios are inconsistent with information parasitism. c Comparing energy intake between group-level (solid) and within-group variation (dashed) from simulations. Inset is a zoom in of main panel. These results are consistent with the dot-dashed line in B and indicate the absence of information parasitism. Data are means and standard deviation of energy intake obtained using ‘parsweep’ simulations using data from years 40 to 140 from 10 simulations