Abstract
Environmental stressors during early life may have persistent consequences for phenotypic development and fitness. In group-living species, an important stressor during juvenile development is the presence and familiarity status of conspecific individuals. To alleviate intraspecific conflicts during juvenile development, many animals evolved the ability to discriminate familiar and unfamiliar individuals based on prior association and use this ability to preferentially associate with familiar individuals. Assuming that familiar neighbours require less attention than unfamiliar ones, as predicted by limited attention theory, assorting with familiar individuals should increase the efficiency in other tasks. We assessed the influence of social familiarity on within-group association behaviour, development and foraging of juvenile life stages of the group-living, plant-inhabiting predatory mite Phytoseiulus persimilis. The observed groups consisted either of mixed-age familiar and unfamiliar juvenile mites or of age-synchronized familiar or unfamiliar juvenile mites or of pairs of familiar or unfamiliar larvae. Overall, familiar mites preferentially grouped together and foraged more efficiently, i.e. needed less prey at similar developmental speed and body size at maturity, than unfamiliar mites. Preferential association of familiar mites was also apparent in the inter-exuviae distances. Social familiarity was established by imprinting in the larval stage, was not cancelled or overridden by later conspecific contacts and persisted into adulthood. Life stage had an effect on grouping with larvae being closer together than nymphal stages. Ultimately, optimized foraging during the developmental phase may relax within-group competition, enhance current and future food supply needed for optimal development and optimize patch exploitation and leaving under limited food.
Highlights
In virtually every organism, environmental constraints experienced during early life have significant effects on phenotypic development and key life history traits such as growth, development, survival, body size or reproduction
Many groupliving species are able to discriminate familiar and unfamiliar individuals based on prior association (e.g., Waldman 1988; Mateo 2004) and familiar individuals preferentially associate with each other (Chivers et al 1995)
We examined the foraging behaviour and development—from the larval stage until adulthood—of P. persimilis living in age-synchronized groups consisting of either familiar or unfamiliar individuals
Summary
Environmental constraints experienced during early life have significant effects on phenotypic development and key life history traits such as growth, development, survival, body size or reproduction (for review, see Stearns 1992; Nylin and Gotthard 1998; Metcalfe and Monaghan 2001; Monaghan 2008). In group-living species, an important stressor during the juvenile developmental phase is the presence of and social interactions with conspecific individuals This is especially true for species inhabiting small, ephemeral food patches such as tadpoles, nesting species such a birds or predatory mites exploiting patchily distributed prey (Schausberger 2003; Alcock 2005; Danchin et al 2008; Hawley 2009). We examined the foraging behaviour and development—from the larval stage until adulthood—of P. persimilis living in age-synchronized groups consisting of either familiar or unfamiliar individuals. To further pinpoint the timing of familiarization, in the third experiment, we assessed the effects of familiarity on general activity and association behaviour of P. persimilis larvae
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