I don’t think you’ve highlighted the casual factor here. It’s not at all clear that the reason bees and ants have a more effective response to predators than do flocks of birds is that the bees are individually less intelligent than the birds.
There’s a very clear evolutionary/game theoretic explanation for the difference between birds and bees here: specifically the inclusive fitness of individual bees is tied to the outcome of the collective whereas the inclusive fitness of the birds is not.
In a game theoretic framework we might say that the payoff matrices for the birds and bees are different, so of course we’d expect them to adopt different strategies.
Neither of these is dependent upon the respective intelligences of individual members of the collectives.
This makes me predict that we should see the effectiveness of group strategies to be more strongly correlated with the alignment of the individuals incentive structure than with the (inverse of) intelligence of their individual members, as your post suggests.
So, for instance, within flocking birds, do birds with smaller brains/body mass ratios adopt better strategies? Within insects, what pattern do we see? I would suggest that the real pattern we’ll end up finding is the one related to inclusive fitness. So I’d predict that pack animals who associate with close relatives like wolves and lions will adopt better collective strategies than animals that form collectives with non-relatives.
Once you control for this I might even expect intelligence of individual members to positively correlate with group strategies, as it can allow them to solve coordination problems that less intelligent individuals couldn’t solve. This would explain the divergence of humans from the trend you notice. But I’m speculating here.
In a game theoretic framework we might say that the payoff matrices for the birds and bees are different, so of course we’d expect them to adopt different strategies.
Yes somewhat, however it would still be best for all birds if they had a better collective defense. In a swarming attack, none would have to sacrifice their life so its unconditionally better for both the individual and the collective. I agree that inclusive fitness is pretty hard to control for, however perhaps you can only get higher inclusive fitness the simpler you go? e.g. all your cells have exactly the same DNA, ants are very similar, birds are more different. The causation could be simpler/less intelligent organisms → more inclusive fitness possible/likely → some cooperation strategies opened up.
I don’t think you’ve highlighted the casual factor here. It’s not at all clear that the reason bees and ants have a more effective response to predators than do flocks of birds is that the bees are individually less intelligent than the birds.
There’s a very clear evolutionary/game theoretic explanation for the difference between birds and bees here: specifically the inclusive fitness of individual bees is tied to the outcome of the collective whereas the inclusive fitness of the birds is not.
In a game theoretic framework we might say that the payoff matrices for the birds and bees are different, so of course we’d expect them to adopt different strategies.
Neither of these is dependent upon the respective intelligences of individual members of the collectives.
This makes me predict that we should see the effectiveness of group strategies to be more strongly correlated with the alignment of the individuals incentive structure than with the (inverse of) intelligence of their individual members, as your post suggests.
So, for instance, within flocking birds, do birds with smaller brains/body mass ratios adopt better strategies? Within insects, what pattern do we see? I would suggest that the real pattern we’ll end up finding is the one related to inclusive fitness. So I’d predict that pack animals who associate with close relatives like wolves and lions will adopt better collective strategies than animals that form collectives with non-relatives.
Once you control for this I might even expect intelligence of individual members to positively correlate with group strategies, as it can allow them to solve coordination problems that less intelligent individuals couldn’t solve. This would explain the divergence of humans from the trend you notice. But I’m speculating here.
Yes somewhat, however it would still be best for all birds if they had a better collective defense. In a swarming attack, none would have to sacrifice their life so its unconditionally better for both the individual and the collective. I agree that inclusive fitness is pretty hard to control for, however perhaps you can only get higher inclusive fitness the simpler you go? e.g. all your cells have exactly the same DNA, ants are very similar, birds are more different. The causation could be simpler/less intelligent organisms → more inclusive fitness possible/likely → some cooperation strategies opened up.