Feces production as a form of social immunity in an insect with facultative maternal care

Diehl, Janina M. C.; Körner, Maximilian; Pietsch, Michael; Meunier, Joël

doi:10.1186/s12862-015-0330-4

Cited by 22 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Falk et al, 2014;Yip & Rayor, 2014;Kramer et al, 2015), and might promote offspring assistance in social immunity (e.g. Reavey, Beare & Cotter, 2014;Diehl et al, 2015) where earlier selection for parental care has promoted family living in underground nests or burrows (Tallamy & Wood, 1986). However, a wide dispersion and/or poor quality of resource patches or prey could also promote parent-offspring competition (e.g.…”

Section: (B) An Extended Account: the Role Of The Neglected Facets Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

The other facets of family life and their role in the evolution of animal sociality

Kramer

Meunier

2018

Biological Reviews

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Family life forms an integral part of the life history of species across the animal kingdom and plays a crucial role in the evolution of animal sociality. Our current understanding of family life, however, is almost exclusively based on studies that (i) focus on parental care and associated family interactions (such as those arising from sibling rivalry and parent-offspring conflict), and (ii) investigate these phenomena in the advanced family systems of mammals, birds, and eusocial insects. Here, we argue that these historical biases have fostered the neglect of key processes shaping social life in ancestral family systems, and thus profoundly hamper our understanding of the (early) evolution of family life. Based on a comprehensive survey of the literature, we first illustrate that the strong focus on parental care in advanced social systems has deflected scrutiny of other important social processes such as sibling cooperation, parent-offspring competition and offspring assistance. We then show that accounting for these neglected processes - and their changing role over time - could profoundly alter our understanding of the origin and subsequent evolution of family life. Finally, we outline how this 'diachronic' perspective on the evolution of family living provides novel insights into general processes driving the evolution of animal sociality. Overall, we infer that the explicit consideration of thus-far neglected facets of family life, together with their study across the whole diversity of family systems, are crucial to advance our understanding of the processes that shape the evolution of social life.

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Section: (B) An Extended Account: the Role Of The Neglected Facets Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

The other facets of family life and their role in the evolution of animal sociality

Kramer

Meunier

2018

Biological Reviews

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“…From the date of egg laying until several weeks after egg hatching, mothers provide extensive forms of care to their eggs and juveniles (called nymphs) that include the protection against predators and pathogens, as well as the provisioning of nymphs with food (e.g. through regurgitation ;Lamb 1976;Kölliker 2007;Boos et al 2014;Koch and Meunier 2014;Diehl et al 2015;Kölliker et al 2015).…”

Section: Electronic Supplementary Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The population determines whether and how life-history traits vary between reproductive events in an insect with maternal care

et al. 2016

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The last reproductive event of a female is often associated with major changes in terms of both maternal and offspring life-history traits. However, the nature of these changes and the importance of population-specific environmental constraints in shaping their expression are difficult to predict and, as a consequence, poorly understood. Here, we investigated whether and how life-history traits vary between reproductive events and whether this variation is population-dependent in the European earwig Forficula auricularia. In this insect species, females produce up to two clutches during their lifetime and express extensive forms of maternal care. We conducted a common garden experiment, in which we measured 11 life-history traits of the first and second clutches of 132 females originating from three populations. Our results showed that clutch size was higher and the level of care expressed towards juveniles lower in second as compared to the first clutches in all three populations. In contrast, we found a population-specific effect on whether and how the reproductive event shaped juvenile quality and a trade-off between egg developmental time and female weight at hatching. Overall, these findings emphasise that the last reproductive event of a female entails both positive and negative effects on various life-history traits of the female herself and her clutch of juveniles. Moreover, our study stresses the importance of population idiosyncrasies on the expression and nature of such cohort-specific effects.

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“…In multiple species of ants, termites and bees, workers are known to remove corpses from the nest, to use antimicrobial substances as nest material and/or to express allogrooming behaviours to reduce the parasite load of group members (Cremer et al ., ; Meunier, ). Notably, a growing number of studies suggest that social immunity can also occur in species with facultative and temporary forms of social interactions, such as the ones expressed during early family life (Cotter & Kilner, ,b; Diehl et al ., ; Meunier, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Survival after pathogen exposure in group‐living insects: don't forget the stress of social isolation!

Kohlmeier

Holländer

Meunier

2016

J of Evolutionary Biology

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A major cost of group-living is its inherent risk of pathogen infection. To limit this risk, many group-living animals have developed the capability to prophylactically boost their immune system in the presence of group members and/or to mount collective defences against pathogens. These two phenomena, called density-dependent prophylaxis and social immunity, respectively, are often used to explain why, in group-living species, individuals survive better in groups than in isolation. However, this survival difference may also reflect an alternative and often overlooked process: a cost of social isolation on individuals' capability to fight against infections. Here, we disentangled the effects of density-dependent prophylaxis, social immunity and stress of social isolation on the survival after pathogen exposure in group-living adults of the European earwig Forficula auricularia. By manipulating the presence of group members both before and after pathogen exposure, we demonstrated that the cost of being isolated after infection, but not the benefits of social immunity or density-dependent prophylaxis, explained the survival of females. Specifically, females kept constantly in groups or constantly isolated had higher survival rates than females that were first in groups and then isolated after infection. Our results also showed that this cost of social isolation was absent in males and that social isolation did not reduce the survival of noninfected individuals. Overall, this study gives a new perspective on the role of pathogens in social evolution, as it suggests that an apparently nonadaptive, personal immune process may promote the maintenance of group-living under pathogenic environments.

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Feces production as a form of social immunity in an insect with facultative maternal care

Cited by 22 publications

References 46 publications

The other facets of family life and their role in the evolution of animal sociality

The other facets of family life and their role in the evolution of animal sociality

The population determines whether and how life-history traits vary between reproductive events in an insect with maternal care

Survival after pathogen exposure in group‐living insects: don't forget the stress of social isolation!

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