Social foragers rely more on dynamic cues than prior beliefs in unpredictable natural environments

In five ice-fishing competitions with 49–53 experienced ice-fishers across 251 trips, prior spatial beliefs predicted early spot choices but were not linked to foraging success.

• Why it matters: Social foraging requires combining what individuals know about prey distributions with what they learn from ongoing personal and others’ behavior, but the relative weight of prior beliefs in natural settings is unclear.
• What they did: Participants marked high-abundance areas on topographic maps before each competition; GPS and headcams tracked behavioral states and foraging success across trips.
• The result: Prior beliefs converged with lake topography and predicted spot choices early, yet dynamic personal and social information dominated; higher reliance on prior beliefs reduced avoidance of unsuccessful locations and limited spatial exploration.

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