Collective aggressiveness limits colony persistence in high‐ but not low‐elevation sites at Amazonian social spiders

Lichtenstein, James L. L.; Fisher, David N.; McEwen, Brendan L.; Nondorf, Daniel T.; Calvache, Esteban; Schmitz, Clara; Elässer, Jana; Pruitt, Jonathan N.

doi:10.1111/jeb.13532

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 52 publications

(86 reference statements)

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“…We found that ant attacks were the most common correlate of colony extinction events at arid sites, whereas fungal outbreaks were most commonly associated with colony extinction events at wetter savannas. These differences may therefore impose divergent selection pressures on colony attributes at different site types, as has previously been shown in S. dumicola (Pruitt et al 2018), the Amazonian social spider Anelosimus eximius (Lichtenstein et al 2019), and the transitionally social spider Anelosimus studiosus (Pruitt & Goodnight 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Predictors of colony extinction vary by habitat type in social spiders

McEwen

Lichtenstein

Fisher

et al. 2019

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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Many animal societies are susceptible to mass mortality events and collapse. Elucidating how environmental pressures determine patterns of collapse is important for understanding how such societies function and evolve. Using the social spider Stegodyphus dumicola, we investigated the environmental drivers of colony extinction along two precipitation gradients across southern Africa, using the Namib and Kalahari deserts versus wetter savanna habitats to the north and east. We deployed experimental colonies (n = 242) along two ~ 800-km transects and returned to assess colony success in the field after 2 months. Specifically, we noted colony extinction events after the 2-month duration and collected environmental data on the correlates of those extinction events (e.g., evidence of ant attacks, no. of prey captured). We found that colony extinction events at desert sites were more frequently associated with attacks by predatory ants as compared with savanna sites, while colony extinctions in wetter savannas sites were more tightly associated with fungal outbreaks. Our findings support the hypothesis that environments vary in the selection pressures that they impose on social organisms, which may explain why different social phenotypes are often favored in each habitat.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Predictors of colony extinction vary by habitat type in social spiders

McEwen

Lichtenstein

Fisher

et al. 2019

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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“…We tested these 45 colonies’ foraging aggressiveness three times over 6 days (every other day). Our test for foraging aggressiveness was the colony's speed to attack a vibrating stimulus (Lichtenstein et al, ). We stimulated colonies to attack by touching a piece of wire fixed to a modified handheld vibratory device (8” Vibrating Jelly Dong, Top Cat Toys) to a small piece of leaf placed in the web.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The vibrations running through the leaf simulate a prey item caught in the web; assays similar to this are often used to estimate foraging aggressiveness in social (e.g. Grinsted, Pruitt, Settepani, & Bilde, ; Lichtenstein et al, ) and solitary (Dirienzo & Montiglio, ; Montiglio & DiRienzo, ) spiders. We timed the number of seconds from the start of the vibrations until a spider touched the leaf.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing the repeatability, robustness to disturbance, and parent–offspring colony resemblance of collective behavior

Fisher

Lichtenstein

Costa‐Pereira

et al. 2020

J of Evolutionary Biology

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Groups of animals possess phenotypes such as collective behaviour, which may determine the fitness of group members. However, the stability and robustness to perturbations of collective phenotypes in natural conditions is not established. Furthermore, whether group phenotypes are transmitted from parent to offspring groups with fidelity is required for understanding how selection on group phenotypes contributes to evolution, but parent–offspring resemblance at the group level is rarely estimated. We evaluated the repeatability, robustness to perturbation and parent–offspring resemblance of collective foraging aggressiveness in colonies of the social spider Anelosimus eximius. Among‐colony differences in foraging aggressiveness were consistent over time but changed if the colony was perturbed through the removal of individuals or via individuals’ removal and subsequent return. Offspring and parent colony behaviour were correlated at the phenotypic level, but only once the offspring colony had settled after being translocated, and the correlation overlapped with zero at the among‐colony level. The parent–offspring resemblance was not driven by a shared elevation but could be due to other environmental factors. The behaviour of offspring colonies in a common garden laboratory setting was not correlated with the behaviour of the parent colony nor with the same colony's behaviour once it was returned to the field. The phenotypes of groups represent a potentially important tier of biological organization, and assessing the stability and heritability of such phenotypes helps us better understand their role in evolution.

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“…Hence, while temperature has repeatedly emerged as an important environmental factor influencing the nature of social interactions, it is clear that scaling these effects to the group level introduces many nuances, including how group size, composition, and the factors that underlie them shape collective behaviour under stress (Aviles 1986, Watanabe 2008, Gordon 2013. For instance, spider colonies in nature appear to become collectively less aggressive at higher elevations, perhaps because infighting and heightened metabolic rates impose greater limitations to persistence in resource-and enemy-poor environments (Lichtenstein et al 2019).…”

Section: B) the Maintenance Of Egalitarian Societiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change as a catalyst of social evolution

Moss¹,

While²

2020

Preprint

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Anthropogenic climatic change will be a major factor shaping natural populations over the foreseeable future. The scope of this issue has spawned the integrative field of global change biology, which is chiefly concerned with identifying vulnerabilities of natural systems to climate change and integrating these into models of biodiversity loss. Meanwhile, there remains considerable latitude for investigating the multiple indirect and nuanced ways that broad-scale shifts in the abiotic environment will impact biological systems. One major unexplored category of effects is on social organisation. While climate has consistently been implicated as a major source of natural selection responsible for facilitating the evolution of complex animal societies, studies directed at testing these links on contemporary climatic time scales have thus far been limited to a select few higher-order, eusocial, taxa. Here, we present the case for how climate change, and specifically rising global temperatures, could catalyze social change at multiple stages of social evolution. We argue that these effects will manifest themselves through a range of subtle, climate-mediated pathways affecting the opportunities, nature, and context of interactions between individuals. We propose a broad conceptual framework for considering these pathways first at the individual level, and then discuss how feedbacks between bottom-up and top-down processes could mediate population-level shifts. We then implement this framework to explore the capacity for climate-mediated shifts in social evolution within three broad categories of social complexity: social group formation, social group maintenance, and social elaboration. For each category, we leverage social evolutionary theory and phylogenetic work spanning diverse systems to describe the pivotal traits that underpin transitions from each level of social complexity. In doing so, we aim to build a case for how short-term individual responses to climate could scale to impart constructive and/or destructive effects on the origins, maintenance, and diversification of animal societies.

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Collective aggressiveness limits colony persistence in high‐ but not low‐elevation sites at Amazonian social spiders

Cited by 7 publications

References 52 publications

Predictors of colony extinction vary by habitat type in social spiders

Predictors of colony extinction vary by habitat type in social spiders

Assessing the repeatability, robustness to disturbance, and parent–offspring colony resemblance of collective behavior

Climate change as a catalyst of social evolution

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