Abstract
Several factors can influence individual and group behavioral variation that can have important fitness consequences. In this study, we tested how two habitat types (seminatural meadows and meadows invaded by Solidago plants) and factors like colony and worker size and nest density influence behavioral (activity, meanderness, exploration, aggression, and nest displacement) variation on different levels of the social organization of Myrmica rubra ants and how these might affect the colony productivity. We assumed that the factors within the two habitat types exert different selective pressures on individual and colony behavioral variation that affects colony productivity. Our results showed individual-/colony-specific expression of both mean and residual behavioral variation of the studied behavioral traits. Although habitat type did not have any direct effect, habitat-dependent factors, like colony size and nest density influenced the individual mean and residual variation of several traits. We also found personality at the individual-level and at the colony level. Exploration positively influenced the total- and worker production in both habitats. Worker aggression influenced all the productivity parameters in seminatural meadows, whereas activity had a positive effect on the worker and total production in invaded meadows. Our results suggest that habitat type, through its environmental characteristics, can affect different behavioral traits both at the individual and colony level and that those with the strongest effect on colony productivity primarily shape the personality of individuals. Our results highlight the need for complex environmental manipulations to fully understand the effects shaping behavior and reproduction in colony-living species.
Highlights
Studies on behavioral variation, including research on animal personality—nonrandom among-individual behavioral variation consistent over time and/or ecological situations—have become a prominent field of behavioral ecology in the last two decades (Réale et al 2007; Sih et al 2012)
We studied four behavioral traits measured at individual-level and one at colony level in a Myrmica rubra ant metapopulation system inhabiting seminatural and invaded meadows
We found no effect of habitat type on the among-traitvariation measured at individual and colony levels
Summary
Studies on behavioral variation, including research on animal personality—nonrandom among-individual behavioral variation consistent over time and/or ecological situations (i.e., change in conditions)—have become a prominent field of behavioral ecology in the last two decades (Réale et al 2007; Sih et al 2012). Animal behavioral studies dedicate more attention to the degree of behavioral plasticity of individuals and its adaptive significance (e.g., Dingemanse et al 2010; Keiser et al 2018), as. A growing number of both theoretical and empirical studies suggest that residual intraindividual variation (hereafter: rIIV; see Biro and Adriaenssens 2013; Briffa 2013; Briffa et al 2013), or in other words, the “rigidity” of an individual’s mean behavior in a certain environment should be considered as potentially independent components of individual behavioral strategy (Dingemanse et al 2010; Briffa 2013; Dingemanse and Wolf 2013; Westneat et al 2013, 2015; Mitchell et al 2016)
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