Persistent social interactions beget more pronounced personalities in a desert-dwelling social spider.

ABSTRACT: The social niche specialization hypothesis predicts that repeated social interactions will generate social niches within groups, thereby promoting consistent individual differences in behaviour. Current support for this hypothesis is mixed, probably because the importance of social niches is dependent upon the ecology of the species. We test whether repeated interactions among group mates generate consistent individual differences in boldness in the social spider, Stegodyphus dumicola. In support of the social niche specialization hypothesis, we found that consistent individual differences in boldness increased with longer group tenure. Interestingly, these differences took longer to appear than in previous work suggesting this species needs more persistent social interactions to shape its

SUBMITTER: Modlmeier AP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4155910 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature