Scent of death: Evolution from sea to land of an extreme collective attraction to conspecific death.

ABSTRACT: All living organisms must eventually die, though in some cases their death can bring life-giving opportunities. Few studies, however, have experimentally tested how animals capitalize on conspecific death and why this specialization would evolve. Here, we conducted experiments on the phylogenetically most closely-related marine and terrestrial hermit crabs to investigate the evolution of responses to death during the sea-to-land transition. In the sea, death of both conspecifics and heterospecifics generates unremodeled shells needed by marine hermit crabs. In contrast, on land, terrestrial hermit crabs are specialized to live in architecturally remodeled shells, and the sole opportunity to acquire these essential resources is conspecific death. We experimentally tested these different spe

SUBMITTER: Valdes L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6392395 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature