Where one species leads, another follows: interspecies processions in tropical caterpillars

White, Stefanie A.; Deacon, Amy E.

doi:10.1002/ecy.3249

Cited by 3 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…In the two-dimensional limit of a pile, individuals cluster next to each other on a surface. This type of aggregation is found in sawfly larvae covering leaves, whirligig beetles on water surfaces, and processionary caterpillars, as in Figure 4(j) and (t)-(v) (Boevé, 2015;Fitzgerald, 2003;Fletcher, 2007;Lin and Strausfeld, 2012;Uemura et al, 2020;Voise et al, 2011;White and Deacon, 2020).…”

Section: How Bond Types Affect Aggregationsmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…For instance, Mojave Desert blister beetle larvae clump on blades of grass to mimic a female bee and parasitize male bees, which carry them to the food stores of real female bees (Hafernik and Saul-Gershenz, 2000; Saul-Gershenz and Millar, 2006; Saul-Gershenz et al, 2018). Aggregations can also travel to more favorable environments by walking or crawling, such as the processions of larvae (Brues, 1951; Lashley et al, 2018; White and Deacon, 2020). Finally, an aggregation made up of a small fraction of a colony can help the entire colony travel over rough terrain, such as marching army ants that link their bodies into bridges across gaps to shorten the path of the other ants (Graham et al, 2017; Reid et al, 2015).…”

Section: The Functions and Benefits Of Aggregationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the one-dimensional limit of a moving pile, processionary caterpillars walk in one-dimensional head-to-tail trails while searching for a new tree to feed from or a burrow to pupate in (Figure 4(u) and (v), Figure 6(c), and Supplemental Videos S9 and S10). These can be made up of more than one species of caterpillar and rely both on pheromones and physical touch (Fitzgerald, 2003; Uemura et al, 2020; White and Deacon, 2020).…”

Section: Aggregations As Active Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Food is another powerful motivator for aggregation. The presence of food can cause fly larvae and other invertebrates to aggregate while feeding, while the lack of food in the environment sometimes results in foraging aggregations, such as caterpillar processions, traveling piles of maggots, sawfly larvae, or fungus gnat larvae, and army ant bridges (Brues, 1951; Fitzgerald, 2003; Jones, 1893; Reid et al, 2015; Shishkov et al, 2019; Sutou et al, 2011; Uemura et al, 2020; White and Deacon, 2020; Williston, 1894).…”

Section: Physical Properties Of Individualsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social insects and beyond: The physics of soft, dense invertebrate aggregations

Shishkov

Peleg

2022

Collective Intelligence

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Aggregation is a common behavior by which groups of organisms arrange into cohesive groups. Whether suspended in the air (like honey bee clusters), built on the ground (such as army ant bridges), or immersed in water (such as sludge worm blobs), these collectives serve a multitude of biological functions, from protection against predation to the ability to maintain a relatively desirable local environment despite a variable ambient environment. In this review, we survey dense aggregations of a variety of insects, other arthropods, and worms from a soft matter standpoint. An aggregation can be orders of magnitude larger than its individual organisms, consisting of tens to hundreds of thousands of individuals, and yet functions as a coherent entity. Understanding how aggregating organisms coordinate with one another to form a superorganism requires an interdisciplinary approach. We discuss how considering the physics of an aggregation can yield additional insights to those gained from ecological and physiological considerations, given that the aggregating individuals exchange information, energy, and matter continually with the environment and one another. While the connection between animal aggregations and the physics of non-living materials has been proposed since the early 1900s, the recent advent of physics of behavior studies provides new insights into social interactions governed by physical principles. Current efforts focus on eusocial insects; however, we show that these may just be the tip of an iceberg of superorganisms that take advantage of physical interactions and simple behavioral rules to adapt to changing environments. By bringing attention to a wide range of invertebrate aggregations, we wish to inspire a new generation of scientists to explore collective dynamics and bring a deeper understanding of the physics of dense living aggregations.

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Section: How Bond Types Affect Aggregationsmentioning

confidence: 81%

Section: The Functions and Benefits Of Aggregationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Aggregations As Active Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Physical Properties Of Individualsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Social insects and beyond: The physics of soft, dense invertebrate aggregations

Shishkov

Peleg

2022

Collective Intelligence

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“…Host plants are selected both by ovipositing female Lepidoptera and by caterpillars [18]. Caterpillars can switch among host plants either through ballooning (via silken thread) or by locomotion [19,20]. Through host plant shifts, caterpillars can offset poor oviposition choices [18,21], balance nutritional intake [22][23][24], shift from the high protein demand of early instars to the high carbohydrate demand of later stages [9,25], and increase food resources (e.g., feeding habit shift from miner to external feeder [26]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leaf Nutritional Content, Tree Richness, and Season Shape the Caterpillar Functional Trait Composition Hosted by Trees

Anttonen

Chesters

et al. 2022

Insects

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Nutritional content of host plants is expected to drive caterpillar species assemblages and their trait composition. These relationships are altered by tree richness-induced neighborhood variation and a seasonal decline in leaf quality. We tested how key functional traits related to the growth and defenses of the average caterpillar hosted by a tree species are shaped by nutritional host quality. We measured morphological traits and estimated plant community-level diet breadth based on occurrences from 1020 caterpillars representing 146 species in a subtropical tree diversity experiment from spring to autumn in one year. We focused on interspecific caterpillar trait variation by analyzing presence-only patterns of caterpillar species for each tree species. Our results show that tree richness positively affected caterpillar species-sharing among tree species, which resulted in lowered trait variation and led to higher caterpillar richness for each tree species. However, community-level diet breadth depended more on the nutritional content of host trees. Higher nutritional quality also supported species-poorer but more abundant communities of smaller and less well-defended caterpillars. This study demonstrates that the leaf nutritional quality of trees shapes caterpillar trait composition across diverse species assemblages at fine spatial scales in a way that can be predicted by ecological theory.

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Towards an integrative approach to understanding collective behaviour in caterpillars

McLellan

Montgomery

2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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To evolve, and remain adaptive, collective behaviours must have a positive impact on overall individual fitness. However, these adaptive benefits may not be immediately apparent owing to an array of interactions with other ecological traits, which can depend on a lineage's evolutionary past and the mechanisms controlling group behaviour. A coherent understanding of how these behaviours evolve, are exhibited, and are coordinated across individuals, therefore requires an integrative approach spanning traditional disciplines in behavioural biology. Here, we argue that lepidopteran larvae are well placed to serve as study systems for investigating the integrative biology of collective behaviour. Lepidopteran larvae display a striking diversity in social behaviour, which illustrates critical interactions between ecological, morphological and behavioural traits. While previous, often classic, work has provided an understanding of how and why collective behaviours evolve in Lepidoptera, much less is known about the developmental and mechanistic basis of these traits. Recent advances in the quantification of behaviour, and the availability of genomic resources and manipulative tools, allied with the exploitation of the behavioural diversity of tractable lepidopteran clades, will change this. In doing so, we will be able to address previously intractable questions that can reveal the interplay between levels of biological variation. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Collective behaviour through time’.

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Where one species leads, another follows: interspecies processions in tropical caterpillars

Cited by 3 publications

References 10 publications

Social insects and beyond: The physics of soft, dense invertebrate aggregations

Social insects and beyond: The physics of soft, dense invertebrate aggregations

Leaf Nutritional Content, Tree Richness, and Season Shape the Caterpillar Functional Trait Composition Hosted by Trees

Towards an integrative approach to understanding collective behaviour in caterpillars

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