Ultimate explanations and suboptimal choice

•The optimizing action of natural selection does not imply optimal behavior.•Breaches of rationality are expected due to a number of constraints.•A model incorporating such constraints can account for sub-optimal choice.•Deviations from rationality are tools to understand the adaptive significance o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioural processes 2018-07, Vol.152, p.63-72
Main Authors: Vasconcelos, Marco, Machado, Armando, Pandeirada, Josefa N.S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptiveness
Behavior
Cognition & reasoning
Decision making
Food intake
Long-Term rate
Manipulation
Mechanism
Natural selection
Optimal foraging
Rationality
Sub-Optimal choice
Ultimate explanation
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Summary:•The optimizing action of natural selection does not imply optimal behavior.•Breaches of rationality are expected due to a number of constraints.•A model incorporating such constraints can account for sub-optimal choice.•Deviations from rationality are tools to understand the adaptive significance of behavioral mechanisms.•Existing mechanisms bear the footprint of the selective pressures of the animals’ characteristic ecology. Researchers have unraveled multiple cases in which behavior deviates from rationality principles. We propose that such deviations are valuable tools to understand the adaptive significance of the underpinning mechanisms. To illustrate, we discuss in detail an experimental protocol in which animals systematically incur substantial foraging losses by preferring a lean but informative option over a rich but non-informative one. To understand how adaptive mechanisms may fail to maximize food intake, we review a model inspired by optimal foraging principles that reconciles sub-optimal choice with the view that current behavioral mechanisms were pruned by the optimizing action of natural selection. To move beyond retrospective speculation, we then review critical tests of the model, regarding both its assumptions and its (sometimes counterintuitive) predictions, all of which have been upheld. The overall contention is that (a) known mechanisms can be used to develop better ultimate accounts and that (b) to understand why mechanisms that generate suboptimal behavior evolved, we need to consider their adaptive value in the animal’s characteristic ecology.
ISSN:0376-6357
1872-8308
DOI:10.1016/j.beproc.2018.03.023