| 1. |
- Bechsgaard, Jesper, et al.
(författare)
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Impaired immune function accompanies social evolution in spiders
- 2022
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Ingår i: Biology letters. - : The Royal Society. - 1744-9561 .- 1744-957X. ; 18:12, s. 20220331-20220331
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- An efficient immune system is essential to the survival of many animals. Sociality increases risk of pathogen transmission, which should select for enhanced immune function. However, two hypotheses instead predict a weakened immune function: relaxed selection caused by social immunity/protection, and reduced efficacy of selection due to inbreeding, reproductive skew and female bias in social species that reduce effective population size and accelerate genetic drift. We assessed the effect of social evolution on immune function in a comparative study of two social spider species and their closely related subsocial sister species (genus Stegodyphus). The haemolymph of social species was less efficient in inhibiting bacterial growth of the potentially pathogenic bacteria Bacillus subtilis than that of subsocial species. Reduced efficacy of selection in social species was supported by comparative genomic analysis showing substantially elevated non-synonymous substitutions in immune genes in one of the social species. We propose that impaired immune function results from reduced efficacy of selection because the evolution of sociality in spiders is accompanied by demographic processes that elevate genetic drift. Positive feedback between pathogen-induced local extinctions and the resulting elevation of genetic drift may further weaken responses to selection by pathogens, and threaten species persistence.
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| 2. |
- Grinsted, Lena, et al.
(författare)
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Diverging cooperative prey capture strategies in convergently evolved social spiders
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of Arachnology. - 0161-8202. ; 50:2, s. 256-264
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sociality in spiders has evolved independently multiple times, resulting in convergently evolved cooperative breeding and prey capture. In all social spiders, prey is captured by only a subset of group members and then shared with other, non-attacking group members. However, spiders' propensity to attack prey may differ among species due to species-specific trade-offs between risks, costs and benefits of prey capture involvement. We explored whether engagement in prey attack differs among three social Stegodyphus species, using orthopteran prey, and found substantial differences. Stegodyphus mimosarum Pavesi, 1883 had a low prey acceptance rate, was slow to attack prey, and engaged very few spiders in prey attack. In S. sarasinorum Karsch, 1892, prey acceptance was high, independently of prey size, but more spiders attacked when prey was small. While medium-sized prey had higher acceptance rate in S. dumicola Pocock, 1898, indicating a preference, the number of attackers was not affected by prey size. Our results suggest that the three species may have different cooperative prey capture strategies. In S. mimosarum and S. dumicola, whose geographical ranges overlap, these strategies may represent niche specialization, depending on whether their respective cautious and choosy approaches extend to other prey types than orthopterans, while S. sarasinorum may have a more opportunistic approach. We discuss factors that can affect social spiders' foraging strategy, such as prey availability, predation pressure, and efficiency of the communal web to ensnare prey. Future studies are required to investigate to which extent species-specific cooperative foraging strategies are shaped by ontogeny, group size, and plastic responses to environmental factors.
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| 3. |
- Grinsted, Lena, et al.
(författare)
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Prey to predator body size ratio in the evolution of cooperative hunting—a social spider test case
- 2020
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Ingår i: Development, Genes and Evolution. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0949-944X .- 1432-041X. ; 230:2, s. 173-184
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- One of the benefits of cooperative hunting may be that predators can subdue larger prey. In spiders, cooperative, social species can capture prey many times larger than an individual predator. However, we propose that cooperative prey capture does not have to be associated with larger caught prey per se, but with an increase in the ratio of prey to predator body size. This can be achieved either by catching larger prey while keeping predator body size constant, or by evolving a smaller predator body size while maintaining capture of large prey. We show that within a genus of relatively large spiders, Stegodyphus, subsocial spiders representing the ancestral state of social species are capable of catching the largest prey available in the environment. Hence, within this genus, the evolution of cooperation would not provide access to otherwise inaccessible, large prey. Instead, we show that social Stegodyphus spiders are smaller than their subsocial counterparts, while catching similar sized prey, leading to the predicted increase in prey-predator size ratio with sociality. We further show that in a genus of small spiders, Anelosimus, the level of sociality is associated with an increased size of prey caught while predator size is unaffected by sociality, leading to a similar, predicted increase in prey-predator size ratio. In summary, we find support for our proposed ‘prey to predator size ratio hypothesis’ and discuss how relaxed selection on large body size in the evolution of social, cooperative living may provide adaptive benefits for ancestrally relatively large predators.
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| 4. |
- Rose, Clémence, et al.
(författare)
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The role of inter-individual intolerance in group cohesion and the transition to sociality in spiders
- 2022
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Ingår i: Journal of evolutionary biology. - : Wiley. - 1010-061X .- 1420-9101. ; 35:7, s. 1020-1026
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Conspecific tolerance is key for maintaining group cohesion in animals. Understanding shifts from conspecific tolerance to intolerance is therefore important for understanding transitions to sociality. Subsocial species disperse to a solitary lifestyle after a gregarious juvenile phase and display conspecific intolerance as adults as a mechanism to maintain a solitary living. The development of intolerance towards group members is hypothesized to play a role in dispersal decisions in subsocial species. One hypothesis posits that dispersal is triggered by factors such as food competition with the subsequent development of conspecific intolerance, rather than conspecific intolerance developing prior to and potentially driving dispersal. Consistent with this hypothesis, we show that intolerance (inferred by inter-individual distance) developed post-dispersal in the subsocial spider Stegodyphus lineatus. The development of conspecific intolerance was delayed when maintaining spiders in groups showing plasticity in this trait, which is advantageous when trade-offs are not fixed over time. However, major evolutionary transitions, such as the transition to sociality, can permanently modify trade-offs and cause derived adaptations by the evolution of new or modified traits or evolutionary loss of traits that become redundant. Sociality in spiders has evolved repeatedly from subsocial ancestors, and social life in family groups combined with a lack of interaction with competing groups suggests relaxed selection for the development of conspecific intolerance. In the social Stegodyphus sarasinorum we found no evidence for the development of conspecific intolerance, consistent with the loss of this trait. Instead, we found evidence for conspecific attraction, which is likely to govern group cohesion.
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