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Fish in larger shoals find food faster

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Summary

Experiments on shoaling cyprinids hunting for food on patches in tanks demonstrate and advantage of foraging in a group. Individual goldfish (Carassius auratus) and minnows (Phoxinus phoxinus) in a shoal of conspecifics located food more rapidly as shoal size increased from 2 to 20. although shoaling minnows form polarised schools more readily than goldfish, which rarely do so, both species benefited from the trend of speedier food location with increasing group size.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Animal Biology, University College of North Wales, LL57 2UW, Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales

    T. J. Pitcher, A. E. Magurran & I. J. Winfield

Authors
  1. T. J. Pitcher
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  2. A. E. Magurran
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  3. I. J. Winfield
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Pitcher, T.J., Magurran, A.E. & Winfield, I.J. Fish in larger shoals find food faster. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 10, 149–151 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00300175

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00300175

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