Abstract
Animals living in social groups often need to conduct certain tasks, such as prey capture or nest maintenance. We might expect individuals to specialize in these tasks, as specialization should increase efficiency and therefore group performance. In groups that vary in sex, morphology, or generation, these factors often determine task participation. However, in social groups where these factors are invariant, persistent individual differences in behavior may drive task specialization. We tested this prediction in groups of the social spider Anelosimus eximius, through experiments conducted on natural colonies in the field. We measured the response to a risky stimulus of individual spiders and then tested whether this predicted their location and/or activity when placed back in a colony. We found the more risk-prone individuals were more likely to be in the more exposed areas of the colony used for capturing prey. Irrespective of the risk-taking behavior, individuals rest and care for young in the protective region of the colony, while in the exposed area of the web individuals are more active and more likely to be walking. Therefore, individual’s responses to risk showed an influence on where an individual would settle within the colony but had no effect on its activity. Our results support previous work that suggests adult A. eximius do not specialize in tasks. Indirect pathways for individual traits, via differences in spatial location or activity levels, may help to explain variation among-individuals in task participation.
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Data Availability
Data publicly available in a data repository: https://github.com/NuEVo-Ufba/Resende_etal_EximiusTask_R.git.
Code Availability
Code publicly available on Github repository: https://github.com/NuEVo-Ufba/Resende_etal_EximiusTask_R.git.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) grant (nº 1583297) that supported this work. We also thank all Núcleo de Etologia e Evolução (NuEVo) colleagues that gave insights and precious suggestions to improve the work. We finally thank Rafael Paulino and Sidnei Sampaio for their help during field work.
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This study was financed by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) grant nº 1583297.
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Leonardo Palloni Accetti Resende collected the data, wrote the main manuscript text, and prepared Figs. 1 and 3. David Fisher performed the statistical analysis and prepared Figs. 2, 4, and 5. Isabelle Oliveira Lima Luz collected the data and contributed to the writing of the manuscript text. Hilton Ferreira Japyassú contributed to the writing of the manuscript text. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Resende, L.P.A., Fisher, D.N., Luz, I.O.L. et al. A Simpler Way to Organize Society: Response to a Risky Stimulus is Related to the Spatial Distribution of the Individuals Within a Spider Colonial Web. J Insect Behav (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-024-09848-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-024-09848-9