When social animals forage together, they may engage in frequency-dependent strategies either as producers, those who acquire food with their own energy, or as scroungers, those who feed on what the producers discover. An individual's choice of strategy may depend on the frequency of strategies within the group, or it may depend on the individual's own traits. Most of our understanding of producer–scrounger relationships comes from highly social species, but we may gain different insights by studying less social species. We used novel puzzle box experiments to study social foraging relationships and identify the traits associated with strategy choice in facultatively social yellow-bellied marmots, Marmota flaviventer. We found that marmots had consistent strategies as either producers or scroungers. Furthermore, several individuals specialized as scroungers, following the producers to the puzzle box before other scroungers. However, their roles were only associated with sex (males were more likely to produce), and not with age, boldness or dominance rank. Marmots' lack of trait-regulated foraging roles may be associated with their relatively abundant and not-entirely defensible food, or may emerge from their lack of obligate social structure. We discuss how multiple factors may explain variation in social foraging behaviour.

当社交动物觅食时，它们可能会以频率依赖的策略参与生产，即以自己的能量获取食物的生产者，或以以生产者的发现为食的繁殖者。个人对策略的选择可能取决于小组中策略的频率，也可能取决于个人自身的特征。我们对生产者与统治者之间的关系的大多数了解来自高​​度社会的物种，但是我们可以通过研究较少的社会物种来获得不同的见解。我们使用新颖的益智盒实验来研究社交觅食关系并确定兼性社交黄腹土拨鼠土拨鼠Marmota flaviventer的策略选择相关特征。我们发现土拨鼠作为生产者或强势者具有一致的策略。此外，有几个人专门从事狼牙棒的制作，跟随制作者先于拼图室，然后跟随其他狼牙棒。但是，他们的角色仅与性别相关（男性更有可能产生），而与年龄，大胆或统治地位无关。土拨鼠缺乏特质调节的觅食角色可能与它们相对丰富且并非完全可防御的食物有关，或者可能是由于缺乏专心的社会结构而引起的。我们讨论了多种因素如何解释社会觅食行为的差异。