Early Environmental Conditions Shape Personality Types in a Jumping Spider

Abstract

Individuals of many species across the animal kingdom are found to be less plastic than expected, even in behavioral traits. The existence of consistent behavioral differences between individuals, termed "personality differences", is puzzling, since plastic behavior is considered ideal to enable animals to adaptively respond to changes in environmental conditions. In order to elucidate which mechanisms are important for the evolution of personality differences, it is crucial to understand which aspects of the environment are important for the development of personality differences. Here, we tested whether physical or social aspects of the environment during development influence individual differentiation (mean level of behavior) using the jumping spider Marpissa muscosa. Furthermore, we assessed whether those behaviors were repeatable, i.e. whether personalities existed. We applied a split-brood design and raised spider siblings in three different environments: a deprived environment with no enrichment, a socially and a physically enriched environment. We focused on exploratory behavior and repeatedly assessed individual behavior in a novel environment and a novel object test. Results show that the environment during development influenced spiders' exploratory tendencies: spiders raised in enriched environments tended to be more exploratory. Most investigated behaviors were repeatable (i.e., personalities existed) across all individuals tested, whereas only few behaviors were also repeatable across individuals that had experienced the same environmental condition. Taken together, our results indicate that external stimuli can influence the development of one aspect of personality, the inter-individual variation (mean level of behavior), in a jumping spider. We also found family by environment interactions on behavioral traits potentially suggesting genetic variation in developmental plasticity.

Early environmental conditions affect the volume of higher‐order brain centers in a jumping spider

“…For M. muscosa , Liedtke et al . () showed that the exploration tendency was higher in spiders from the physically enriched treatment (P), which correlates with our findings of a larger AB in spiders from this treatment group. In addition, spiders in treatment D were much more restricted in space than individuals from treatment P, which may have resulted in reduced locomotory activity.…”

“…weekly. For a more detailed rearing protocol, see Liedtke et al (2015). Wildcaught adult spiders (W) were used for comparison.…”

“…The cognitive abilities of salticids include planning, learning and reversal learning (Wilcox & Jackson, ; Jackson & Cross, ; Liedtke & Schneider, ) and are affected by rearing conditions (Carducci & Jakob, ). In the jumping spider Marpissa muscosa (Clerck, 1757), different rearing environments led to differences in exploration tendency (Liedtke et al ., ) and learning ability (Liedtke & Schneider, ). Here, we ask whether an increase in complexity of either the social or physical environment is reflected in neuroanatomical differences.…”

Adult bacterial exposure increases behavioral variation and drives higher repeatability in field crickets

“…Many behavioral traits have been shown to be plastic in response to experiences during development (Sinn et al 2008; Butler et al 2012; DiRienzo et al 2012; Niemelä et al 2012a; DiRienzo et al 2015; Liedtke et al 2015; DiRienzo and Montiglio 2016). Developmental plasticity is largely assumed to be an adaptive, and mostly irreversible, response where an organism experiences an environmental cue during a sensitive period and adjusts its traits accordingly for the future (West-Eberhard 2003; Groothuis and Trillmich 2011).…”

Personality underground: evidence of behavioral types in the solitary subterranean rodentCtenomys talarum

“…During ontogeny, personality traits also change within individuals. These changes in temporal consistency may arise due to differential exposure to environmental conditions or to individual differences in developmental plasticity when individuals are exposed to the same conditions (Stamps & Krishnan, 2014;Liedtke et al, 2015). Personality variation may be maintained because there are multiple optima in different conditions, over time or space (Boon, Réale & Boutin, 2007), such as variations in predation pressure (Réale & Festa-Bianchet, 2003), food availability (Dingemanse et al, 2004), or social condition (Both et al, 2005).…”