Indar W. Ramnarine

1 INTRODUCTION Prey optimize their fitness by integrating and responding to publically available information (i.e. cues) in order to assess predation risk (Lima & Dill, 1990; McNamara & Dall, 2010). Some of these cues may be unreliable in that they do not consistently correlate with a particular event (Searcy & Nowicki, 2005).

Collective decisions play a major role in the benefits that animals gain from living in groups. Although the mechanisms of how groups collectively make decisions have been extensively researched, the response of within-group dynamics to ecological conditions is virtually unknown, despite adaptation to the environment being a cornerstone in biology.