Behavioural syndromes and their fitness consequences in a socially polymorphic spider, Anelosimus studiosus

Pruitt, Jonathan N.; Riechert, Susan E.; Jones, Tricia S.

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2008.05.009

Cited by 153 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Instead, individual females display a discrete, bimodal behavioral polymorphism of "docile" and "aggressive" behavioral types (31,32). Aggressive females show heightened aggression and responsiveness toward predators, prey, and mates (33)(34)(35)(36). In this species, individual differences in behavior or "personality" are thought to play an organizing role analogous to that of castes in social insects.…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

RETRACTED: Animal personality aligns task specialization and task proficiency in a spider society

Wright

Holbrook

Pruitt

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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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 withincolony variation is maintained because of advantages gleaned by division of labor.behavioral syndrome | social organization | cooperation | temperament | Araneae

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Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

RETRACTED: Animal personality aligns task specialization and task proficiency in a spider society

Wright

Holbrook

Pruitt

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Previous data demonstrated that asocial females consume a disproportionately large amount of prey and generally behave aggressively towards conspecifics [41][42][43][44], leading to the hypothesis that asocial females act as social parasites in mixed-phenotype colonies, and thus impede overall colony function. In prior work, we found the 'social parasite' hypothesis to be somewhat supported by the finding that group-level prey extraction efficiency was positively associated with the social phenotype in staged mixed-phenotype foraging bouts [44].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some data indicate that asocial females might act as social parasites within mixed-phenotype colonies, consuming a disproportionately large amount of food and even attacking other colony members [41,44]. However, asocial individuals are also more aggressive towards predators, prey and mates, and are generally more active than social females [38,[41][42][43][44]. Because of the pronounced behavioural differences between social and asocial females, there exists a potential for differential task performance within mixed-phenotype colonies, and thus asocial females might contribute to colony function in some significant way.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the exception of mating, males contribute little to colony function in spider societies [10][11][12]37]. Female A. studiosus exhibit a social behaviour polymorphism throughout the majority of their range [38], where they exhibit either an aggressive 'asocial' or a docile 'social' phenotype [39][40][41][42][43]. Perhaps, counterintuitively, both 'social' and 'asocial' females can be found in varying proportions both as singleton individuals and coalesced together in multi-female colonies [44,45], and naturally occurring colonies vary tremendously in the relative proportion of these two phenotypes [44].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How within-group behavioural variation and task efficiency enhance fitness in a social group

2010

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How task specialization, individual task performance and within-group behavioural variation affects fitness is a longstanding and unresolved problem in our understanding of animal societies. In the temperate social spider, Anelosimus studiosus, colony members exhibit a behavioural polymorphism; females either exhibit an aggressive 'asocial' or docile 'social' phenotype. We assessed individual prey-capture success for both phenotypes, and the role of phenotypic composition on group-level prey-capture success for three prey size classes. We then estimated the effect of group phenotypic composition on fitness in a common garden, as inferred from individual egg-case masses. On average, asocial females were more successful than social females at capturing large prey, and colony-level prey-capture success was positively associated with the frequency of the asocial phenotype. Asocial colony members were also more likely to engage in prey-capture behaviour in group-foraging situations. Interestingly, our fitness estimates indicate females of both phenotypes experience increased fitness when occupying colonies containing unlike individuals. These results imply a reciprocal fitness benefit of within-colony behavioural variation, and perhaps division of labour in a spider society.

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“…As species are added to this list (e.g. [5][6][7]; see [8][9][10] for recent reviews), so too are new behavioural characteristics being linked to existing suites of correlated traits (e.g. boldness correlates with aggressiveness [11]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sometimes slower is better: slow-exploring birds are more sensitive to changes in a vocal discrimination task

et al. 2010

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Animal personality, defined as consistent individual differences across context and time, has attracted much recent research interest in the study of animal behaviour. More recently, this field has begun to examine how such variation arose and is maintained within populations. The habitat-dependent selection hypothesis, which posits that animals with differing personality types may fare better (i.e. have a fitness advantage) in different habitats, suggests one possible mechanism. In the current experiment, we tested whether slow-and fast-exploring black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), determined by performance in a novel environment exploration task, perform differentially when the demands of an acoustic operant discrimination (cognitive) task were altered following successful task acquisition. We found that slow-exploring birds learn to reverse previously learned natural category rules more quickly than faster exploring conspecifics. In accordance with the habitat-dependent selection hypothesis, and previous work with great tits (Parus major), a close relative of the black-capped chickadee, our results suggest that fast-exploring birds may perform better in stable, predictable environments where forming a routine is advantageous, while slow-exploring birds are favoured in unstable, unpredictable environments, where task demands often change. Our results also support a hypothesis derived from previous work with great tits; slow-exploring birds may be generally more flexible (i.e. able to modify their behaviour in accordance with changes in environmental stimuli) in some learning tasks.

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Behavioural syndromes and their fitness consequences in a socially polymorphic spider, Anelosimus studiosus

Cited by 153 publications

References 22 publications

RETRACTED: Animal personality aligns task specialization and task proficiency in a spider society

RETRACTED: Animal personality aligns task specialization and task proficiency in a spider society

How within-group behavioural variation and task efficiency enhance fitness in a social group

Sometimes slower is better: slow-exploring birds are more sensitive to changes in a vocal discrimination task

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