The research team also studied how well each personality type carried out the tasks and again found strong differences.
jijjeer123
When the spiders were made to live outside of a colony, aggressive females were more effective at capturing prey, constructed better webs and were more likely to attack and repel intruders than docile individuals.
jiujiaw'blog
However aggressive types were less successful at rearing large numbers of offspring than docile ones.

Mr Wright said: "We were surprised at how poor parents aggressive spiders were. It turns out that they are so aggressive that they will even act aggressively towards their own offspring, killing many in the act." useik

But having both personalities present is key to a colony's success.ふしじそｋblog

"These spiders achieve the best of both worlds by evolving two behavioural types with specialised tasks. Aggressive spiders perform all the tasks where aggression is important, and docile spiders are allowed to focus on being good parents. It's a win-win situation," Mr Wright added.

Having provided the clearest evidence for division of labour organised around behavioural rather than physical differences, the authors say personality may play a similar role in many other animal societies. ふえういえい

Posted by: lisaere at 06:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 201 words, total size 2 kb.