Sibling Cooperation in Earwig Families Provides Insights into the Early Evolution of Social Life
Sibling Cooperation in Earwig Families Provides Insights into the Early Evolution of Social Life
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DOI：
10.1086/675364
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发表时间：
2014-04-01
影响因子：
2.9
通讯作者：
Meunier, Joeel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Falk, Joachim;Wong, Janine W. Y.;Meunier, Joeel
从独居生活到社会生活的进化转变是由社会互动的直接和间接的适应性利益驱动的。因此，理解促进社会生活早期进化的条件需要在非衍生的社会系统中识别这些好处，例如动物家庭，其后代是流动的，能够分散并能够独立生存。众所周知，家庭生活通过父母的照顾为后代提供了好处，但对兄弟姐妹互动的研究通常集中在竞争行为给后代带来的健康成本上。在这里，我们通过实验表明，在欧洲土蜈蚣（Forficula auricularia）的非衍生家庭中，兄弟姐妹的互动也反映了以食物分享形式的合作行为。个体子代摄入的食物通过口对肛门接触和主动异食性进食转移给其兄弟姐妹。尽管与母亲的直接接触限制了兄弟姐妹之间的食物分享，但这些转移在母亲在场和不在场的情况下都发生了。食物剥夺和亲缘关系均不影响转移食物总量，但亲缘关系影响食物释放和食物分享的行为机制。有亲缘关系的后代主要通过异体食食获得食物，而无亲缘关系的后代主要通过口对肛门接触获得食物。总之，本研究强调兄弟姐妹合作可能是促进社会生活早期进化的关键过程。
The evolutionary transition from solitary to social life is driven by direct and indirect fitness benefits of social interactions. Understanding the conditions promoting the early evolution of social life therefore requires identification of these benefits in nonderived social systems, such as animal families where offspring are mobile and able to disperse and will survive independently. Family life is well known to provide benefits to offspring through parental care, but research on sibling interactions generally focused on fitness costs to offspring due to competitive behaviors. Here we show experimentally that sibling interactions also reflect cooperative behaviors in the form of food sharing in nonderived families of the European earwig, Forficula auricularia. Food ingested by individual offspring was transferred to their siblings through mouth-to-anus contacts and active allo-coprophagy. These transfers occurred in both the presence and the absence of the tending mothers, even though the direct contact with the mothers limited sibling food sharing. Neither food deprivation or relatedness influenced the total amount of transferred food, but relatedness affected frass release and the behavioral mechanisms mediating food sharing. Related offspring obtained food predominately through allo-coprophagy, whereas unrelated offspring obtained food through mouth-to-anus contacts. Overall, this study emphasizes that sibling cooperation may be a key process promoting the early evolution of social life.