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Wild social behavior differs following experimental loss of vision in social hermit crabs

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Abstract 

Even for animals with multiple senses at their disposal, there may be a strong reliance on a single sense, like vision, for social behavior. Experimentally blocking or eliminating vision offers a powerful means of testing impacts on social behavior, though few studies have followed experimentally blinded individuals in the wild to test potential changes in social behavior in natural settings. Here we conducted experiments with social hermit crabs (Coenobita compressus), applying opaque material overtop their eyes to temporarily blind individuals. We then released these experimentally blinded individuals and non-blinded control individuals into the wild as well as into captive social settings. Compared to control individuals, experimentally blinded individuals initiated significantly fewer social contacts with conspecifics in the wild. These experimentally blinded individuals were not, however, differentially targeted by conspecifics. Interestingly, unlike the wild experiments, the captive experiments showed no differences in social behavior between experimentally blinded and non-blinded control individuals, suggesting that experiments in natural settings in the wild may be essential to fully unraveling impacts of blindness on social behavior. Broadly, for social animals that are highly reliant on the visual modality, social behavior may change dramatically if they lose their vision.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all members of the Laidre lab, including Clare Doherty, Jakob Krieger, and Leah Valdes, as well as Osa Conservation staff for assistance in the field. All experiments were approved by the Costa Rican Ministerio de Ambiente y Energía (MINAE).

Funding

This work was supported by an EEES/GAANN fellowship to ES and Dartmouth College startup funds to ML.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College, 78 College Street, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA

    Elliott P. Steele & Mark E. Laidre

  2. Graduate Program in Ecology, Evolution, Environment, and Society, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA

    Elliott P. Steele & Mark E. Laidre

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  1. Elliott P. Steele
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  2. Mark E. Laidre
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Contributions

ML conceived the idea for the study and designed the experiments; ES carried out the experiments and collected all the data; both authors jointly analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Elliott P. Steele or Mark E. Laidre.

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This research was conducted in compliance with international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and study of invertebrates.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Communicated by: Matthias Waltert

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Steele, E.P., Laidre, M.E. Wild social behavior differs following experimental loss of vision in social hermit crabs. Sci Nat 110, 20 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-023-01847-8

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