Spatio-temporal scaling: The environment is a continuous space of about 40 km 2, foragers take steps of a meter at a speed of 0.5 m/s, and patches are 20 meters in diameter (Fig. 1 a and Additional file 2). Foragers can observe resources up to 2 meters away, and can observe which resources their neighbors are interacting with at 20 meters (a best case scenario for social learning, Additional file 3). There are no constraints on observing group members for grouping purposes in order to ensure cohesive groups, but the spread of groups tends to be in the order of 5–40 meters. All movement occurs in continuous space and there are no constraints on direction.