Behavior and Ethology Commons^™

Assessment And Decision Making In Animals: A Mechanistic Model Underlying Behavioral Flexibility Can Prevent Ambiguity, Amos Bouskila, Daniel T. Blumstein

Amos Bouskila

Understanding how animals make decisions is a fundamental question in behavioral ecology which has cascading effects on how animals respond to environmental variation. An explicit model of the mechanisms of information processing and decision making can help prevent conflated definitions and ambiguous interpretations. Unambiguous definitions are crucial for clear communication between theoreticians and empiricists and for the rapid advancement of studies of decision making, Moreover, employing a clear model of underlying proximal processes will help bridge the gap between cognitive psychology and behavioral ecology and should aid scientific advancement. We present a simple model to guide studies of assessment and …