Comprehensive study on the hypothesis that cooperative sociality of spider mites conversely evolved through anti-predator strategies

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Various social lives observed in the genus Stigmaeopsis have been hypothesized to conversely evolve through predator-prey interactions. We observed multi-species predator-prey interactions in relation to the variation of life type in spider mites, and discovered several new phenomena that suggest the importance of predators on social life evolution. Furtheremore, we learned that the females of Stigmaeopsis longus clean their woven nest by short-termed adhesive silken threads. This is a new discovery of silk function in animal kingdom, which is regarded as a kind of social behavior. Two forms of Stigmaeopsis miscanthi having different intensities of male-to-male antagonism showed different performances to their specific predator species, i.e. different effects of counterattack behavior against two predator species. In addition, these forms have significantly different life history parameters, even though they are categorized into a single species. These showed that there is much variation in social life even within a species.