Retraction: Individual personalities shape task differentiation in a social spider.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Proceedings B Editor-in-Chief
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7944085 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Deciphering the mechanisms involved in shaping social structure is key to a deeper understanding of the evolutionary processes leading to sociality. Individual specialization within groups can increase colony efficiency and consequently productivity. Here, we test the hypothesis that within-group variation in individual personalities (i.e. boldness and aggression) can shape task differentiation. The social spider Stegodyphus sarasinorum (Eresidae) showed task differentiation (significant unequal participation) in simulated prey capture events across 10-day behavioural assays in the field, independent of developmental stage (level of maturation), eliminating age polyethism. Participation in prey capture was positively associated with level of boldness but not with aggression. Body size positively correlated with being the first spider to emerge from the colony as a response to prey capture but not with being the first to attack, and dispersal distance from experimental colonies correlated with attacking but not with emerging. This suggests that different behavioural responses to prey capture result from a complex set of individual characteristics. Boldness and aggression correlated positively, but neither was associated with body size, developmental stage or dispersal distance. Hence, we show that personalities shape task differentiation in a social spider independent of age and maturation. Our results suggest that personality measures obtained in solitary, standardized laboratory settings can be reliable predictors of behaviour in a social context in the field. Given the wealth of organisms that show consistent individual behavioural differences, animal personality could play a role in social organization in a diversity of animals.
| S-EPMC3735259 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The social niche specialization hypothesis predicts that repeated social interactions will generate social niches within groups, thereby promoting consistent individual differences in behaviour. Current support for this hypothesis is mixed, probably because the importance of social niches is dependent upon the ecology of the species. We test whether repeated interactions among group mates generate consistent individual differences in boldness in the social spider, Stegodyphus dumicola. In support of the social niche specialization hypothesis, we found that consistent individual differences in boldness increased with longer group tenure. Interestingly, these differences took longer to appear than in previous work suggesting this species needs more persistent social interactions to shape its behaviour. Recently disturbed colonies were shyer than older colonies, possibly reflecting differences in predation risk. Our study emphasizes the importance of the social environment in generating animal personalities, but also suggests that the pattern of personality development can depend on subtle differences in species' ecologies.
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Project description:The behavioural composition of a group and the dynamics of social interactions can both influence how social animals work collectively. For example, individuals exhibiting certain behavioural tendencies may have a disproportionately large impact on the group, and so are referred to as keystone individuals, while interactions between individuals can facilitate information transmission about resources. Despite the potential impact of both behavioural composition and interactions on collective behaviour, the relationship between consistent behaviours (also known as personalities) and social interactions remains poorly understood. Here, we use stochastic actor-oriented models to uncover the interdependencies between boldness and social interactions in the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola We find that boldness has no effect on the likelihood of forming social interactions, but interactions do affect boldness, and lead to an increase in the boldness of the shyer individual. Furthermore, spiders tend to interact with the same individuals as their neighbours. In general, boldness decreases over time, but once an individual's boldness begins to increase, this increase accelerates, suggesting a positive feedback mechanism. These dynamics of interactions and boldness result in skewed boldness distributions of a few bold individuals and many shy individuals, as observed in nature. This group behavioural composition facilitates efficient collective behaviours, such as rapid collective prey attack. Thus, by examining the relationship between behaviour and interactions, we reveal the mechanisms that underlie the emergence of adaptive group composition and collective behaviour.
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Project description:Social network structure is a critical group character that mediates the flow of information, pathogens and resources among individuals in a population, yet little is known about what shapes social structures. In this study, we experimentally tested whether social network structure depends on the personalities of individual group members. Replicate groups of forked fungus beetles (Bolitotherus cornutus) were engineered to include only members previously assessed as either more social or less social. We found that individuals expressed consistent personalities across social contexts, exhibiting repeatable numbers of interactions and numbers of partners. Groups composed of more social individuals formed networks with higher interaction rates, higher tie density, higher global clustering and shorter average shortest paths than those composed of less social individuals. We highlight group composition of personalities as a source of variance in group traits and a potential mechanism by which networks could evolve.
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Project description:While grazing lands can offer a diverse range of forages, individuals within herds prefer to graze some habitats and not others. They can have consistent differences in grazing patterns and occupy specific spatial domains, whilst developing tactics and strategies for foraging that are specific to their grazing personalities. In this review, we explore the development of our understanding of grazing personalities, as we move away from the search for an "optimal animal" toward designing behavior-customized herds with an arrangement of individual grazing personalities that enhance ecosystem services and productivity. We present a "grazing personality model" that accounts for the personality of individual animals and for collective behaviors of herds. We argue that grazing personalities of grazing ruminants and other large herbivores are in part genetically determined, and that they can act at the individual and collective level. The social and biophysical environments as well as the emotional state of animals regulate the expression of "grazing genes" that are observed phenotypically as distinct grazing personalities. The reproductive and sexual successes of individuals and herds filter for allele variants of grazing genes and in turn determines their relative frequency. While the selection of one grazing personality may be adequate for homogeneous pastoral systems, the design of herds with a range of grazing personalities that are matched to the habitat diversity may be a better approach to improving the distribution of grazing animals, enhancing ecosystem services, and maximizing productivity.
| S-EPMC7051984 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Agencies reporting on disease outbreaks face many choices about what to report and the scale of its dissemination. Reporting impacts an epidemic by influencing individual decisions directly, and the social network in which they are made. We simulated a dynamic multiplex network model-with coupled infection and communication layers-to examine behavioral impacts from the nature and scale of epidemiological information reporting. We explored how adherence to protective behaviors (social distancing) can be facilitated through epidemiological reporting, social construction of perceived risk, and local monitoring of direct connections, but eroded via social reassurance. We varied reported information (total active cases, daily new cases, hospitalizations, hospital capacity exceeded, or deaths) at one of two scales (population level or community level). Total active and new case reporting at the population level were the most effective approaches, relative to the other reporting approaches. Case reporting, which synergizes with test-trace-and-isolate and vaccination policies, should remain a priority throughout an epidemic.
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Project description:Classic theory on division of labor implicitly assumes that task specialists are more proficient at their jobs than generalists and specialists in other tasks; however, recent data suggest that this might not hold for societies that lack discrete worker polymorphisms, which constitute the vast majority of animal societies. The facultatively social spider Anelosimus studiosus lacks castes, but females exhibit either a "docile" or "aggressive" phenotype. Here we observed the propensity of individual females of either phenotype to perform various tasks (i.e., prey capture, web building, parental care, and colony defense) in mixed-phenotype colonies. We then measured the performance outcomes of singleton individuals of either phenotype at each task to determine their proficiencies. Aggressive females participated more in prey capture, web building, and colony defense, whereas docile females engaged more in parental care. In staged trials, aggressive individuals were more effective at capturing prey, constructing webs, and defending the colony, whereas docile females were more effective at rearing large quantities of brood. Thus, individuals' propensity to perform tasks and their task proficiencies appear to be adaptively aligned in this system. Moreover, because the docile/aggressive phenotypes are heritable, these data suggest that within-colony variation is maintained because of advantages gleaned by division of labor.
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Project description:Social groups often consist of diverse phenotypes, including personality types, and this diversity is known to affect the functioning of the group as a whole. Social selection theory proposes that group composition (i.e. social environment) also influences the performance of individual group members. However, the effect of group behavioural composition on group members remains largely unexplored, and it is still contentious whether individuals benefit more in a social environment with homogeneous or diverse behavioural composition. We experimentally formed groups of house sparrows Passer domesticus with high and low diversity of personality (exploratory behaviour), and found that their physiological state (body condition, physiological stress and oxidative damage) improved with increasing group-level diversity of personality. These findings demonstrate that group personality composition affects the condition of group members and individuals benefit from social heterosis (i.e. associating with a diverse set of behavioural types). This aspect of the social life can play a key role in affiliation rules of social animals and might explain the evolutionary coexistence of different personalities in nature.
| S-EPMC7893263 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Nut-cracking is often cited as one of the most complex behaviours observed in wild chimpanzees. However, the cognitive mechanisms behind its acquisition are still debated. The current null hypothesis is that the form of nut-cracking behaviour relies on variants of social learning, with some researchers arguing, more precisely, that copying variants of social learning mechanisms are necessary. However, to date, very few experiments have directly investigated the potentially sufficient role of individual learning in explaining the behavioural form of nut-cracking. Despite this, the available data provides some evidence for the spontaneous acquisition of nut-cracking by chimpanzees; later group acquisition was then found to be at least facilitated by (unspecified) variants of social learning. The latter findings are in line with both suggested hypotheses, i.e., that copying social learning is required and that other (non-copying) social learning mechanisms are at play. Here we present the first study which focused (initially) on the role of individual learning for the acquisition of the nut-cracking behavioural form in chimpanzees. We tested task-naïve chimpanzees (N = 13) with an extended baseline condition to examine whether the behaviour would emerge spontaneously. After the baseline condition (which was unsuccessful), we tested for the role of social learning by providing social information in a step-wise fashion, culminating in a full action demonstration of nut-cracking by a human demonstrator (this last condition made it possible for the observers to copy all actions underlying the behaviour). Despite the opportunities to individually and/or socially learn nut-cracking, none of the chimpanzees tested here cracked nuts using tools in any of the conditions in our study; thus, providing no conclusive evidence for either competing hypothesis. We conclude that this failure was the product of an interplay of factors, including behavioural conservatism and the existence of a potential sensitive learning period for nut-cracking in chimpanzees. The possibility remains that nut-cracking is a behaviour that chimpanzees can individually learn. However, this behaviour might only be acquired when chimpanzees are still inside their sensitive learning period, and when ecological and developmental conditions allow for it. The possibility remains that nut-cracking is an example of a culture dependent trait in non-human great apes. Recommendations for future research projects to address this question are considered.
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Project description:The social spider Anelosimus studiosus exhibits a behavioral polymorphism where colony members express either a passive, tolerant behavioral tendency (social) or an aggressive, intolerant behavioral tendency (asocial). Here we test whether asocial individuals act as colony defenders by deflecting the suite of foreign (i.e., heterospecific) spider species that commonly exploit multi-female colonies. We (1) determined whether the phenotypic composition of colonies is associated with foreign spider abundance, (2) tested whether heterospecific spider abundance and diversity affect colony survival in the field, and (3) performed staged encounters between groups of A. studiosus and their colony-level predator Agelenopsis emertoni (A. emertoni)to determine whether asocial females exhibit more defensive behavior. We found that larger colonies harbor more foreign spiders, and the number of asocial colony members was negatively associated with foreign spider abundance. Additionally, colony persistence was negatively associated with the abundance and diversity of foreign spiders within colonies. In encounters with a colony-level predator, asocial females were more likely to exhibit escalatory behavior, and this might explain the negative association between the frequency of asocial females and the presence of foreign spider associates. Together, our results indicate that foreign spiders are detrimental to colony survival, and that asocial females play a defensive role in multi-female colonies. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00265-010-1112-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
| S-EPMC3078319 | biostudies-literature