Abstract
The idea of individual niche specialization suggests that individuals should diversify in their realized niches to mitigate inter-individual conflict. We tested the hypothesis that parental and early-life diet experiences drive individual foraging specialization and animal personality formation in plant-inhabiting predatory mites Phytoseiulus persimilis and Phytoseiulus macropilis. Both species are specialized predators of herbivorous spider mites. Adult females and males, whose parents had been exposed to either prey eggs or mobile prey, and/or who themselves had experienced either eggs or mobile prey during juvenile development, were tested for their prey life stage preference, and exploration and activity patterns. Parental and/or personal experience of a given prey life stage exerted species- and sex-dependent effects on the adult predators’ mean and individual foraging phenotypes, with parental plus early-life effects being the strongest. Repeatability in activity and exploration was linked to prey life stage preference, pointing at co-variation of personality formation and individualized foraging niches.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 112424 |
| Number of pages | 19 |
| Journal | iScience |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Early online date | 14 Apr 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 16 May 2025 |
Funding
This study was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF; P33787-B to P.S.). P.S. wrote part of the manuscript during an invited professorship at the University of Kyoto, which funding is greatly appreciated. We thank Mustafa Altintas for help in taking care of the rearing of the mites, and Haralabos Tsolakis, University of Palermo, and Raphael de Campos Castilho, University of Sao Paulo, for sending field-collected specimens of P. persimilis and P. macropilis, which were used as founders of our laboratory populations.
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 106051 Behavioural biology
Keywords
- Entomology
- Zoology
- Biological sciences
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