Group of Arthropod Ecology and Behavior, Division of Plant Protection, Department of Crop Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria.
PLoS One. 2012;7(8):e43590. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0043590. Epub 2012 Aug 22.
Social familiarity, which is based on the ability to recognise familiar conspecific individuals following prior association, may affect all major life activities of group-living animals such as foraging, reproduction and anti-predator behaviours. A scarcely experimentally tested explanation why social familiarity is beneficial for group-living animals is provided by limited attention theory. Limited attention theory postulates that focusing on a given task, such as inspection and assessment of unfamiliar group members, has cognitive and associated physiological and behavioural costs with respect to the attention paid to other tasks, such as anti-predator vigilance and response. Accordingly, we hypothesised that social familiarity enhances the anti-predator success of group-living predatory mites, Phytoseiulus persimilis, confronted with an intraguild predator, the predatory mite Amblyseius andersoni.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We videotaped and analysed the response of two P. persimilis larvae, held in familiar or unfamiliar pairs, to attacks by a gravid A. andersoni female, using the behavioural analyses software EthoVision Pro®. Familiar larvae were more frequently close together, reacted more quickly to predator attacks, survived more predator encounters and survived longer than unfamiliar larvae.
In line with the predictions of limited attention theory, we suggest that social familiarity improves anti-predator behaviours because it allows prey to shift attention to other tasks rather than group member assessment.
社会熟悉度是基于在先前的接触后识别熟悉的同种个体的能力，可能会影响群居动物的所有主要生活活动，如觅食、繁殖和反捕食行为。有限注意力理论为为什么社会熟悉度对群居动物有益提供了一个几乎未经实验测试的解释。有限注意力理论假设，专注于一项给定的任务，例如检查和评估不熟悉的群体成员，会对其他任务（如反捕食警戒和反应）的注意力产生认知和相关的生理和行为成本。因此，我们假设社会熟悉度会提高捕食性螨虫，智利小植绥螨，在面对同种捕食者，捕食性螨，巴氏钝绥螨时的反捕食成功。
方法/主要发现：我们使用行为分析软件 EthoVision Pro®，对两个熟悉或不熟悉的智利小植绥螨幼虫在受到一只怀有身孕的巴氏钝绥螨雌性攻击时的反应进行了录像和分析。熟悉的幼虫更经常地在一起，对捕食者的攻击反应更快，遭遇捕食者的次数更多，存活时间更长。
与有限注意力理论的预测一致，我们认为社会熟悉度可以改善反捕食行为，因为它可以让猎物将注意力转移到其他任务上，而不是评估群体成员。
