Information Cascades – Honey Bees
Information cascades are very prevalent in human decision making in many situations. For example, when deciding if you should attend a party, your response will be affected by your knowledge of earlier responses. If you know that a lot of people who answered before you are attending the party, it will influence you to attend as well due to this informational effect. Also, if you know all of these people responding before you are going, the party will obviously be more fun, causing a direct benefits effect. There are many other examples in which information cascades are used as well, however they are not restricted solely to human decision making.
Honey bees have an interesting hive dynamic with group decision making being very relevant. When honey bees decide that a new hive is needed, scout bees leave the hive each day to obtain information about potential new hive locations. When the bee comes back to the hive, they do their waggle dance, which allows the other bees to know the direction and distance to their potential new hive. The energy and fervor that the waggle dance is done with represents how good the hive location is. Each scout bee gets to either choose a different location copying another scout bees waggle dance or by sticking with their own location, continuing their own dance. Once one potential location begins to get overwhelming support, nearly all of the bees begin to agree with that location. This is very representative of an information cascade. Once a quorum is reached, the next hive location is determined, before there is a unanimous decision.
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/Informational-cascades-in-honeybee-swarming-behaviour/article17288716.ece