Marcossi Ítalo, Fonseca Morgana M, Souza Sarah F J, de Assis Caio H B, Iasczczaki Rafael S, Beghelli Gabriel M, Bittencourt Rafael, Pallini Angelo, Choh Yasuyuki, Janssen Arne
Department of Entomology, Federal University of Viçosa, Viçosa, Minas Gerais, 36570-900, Brazil.
Agriculture and Livestock Research Enterprise of Minas Gerais/EPAMIG, Prudente de Moraes, MG, Brazil.
Oecologia. 2025 Jun 20;207(7):107. doi: 10.1007/s00442-025-05748-7.
Cannibalism is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom. The evolution and causation of cannibalistic behaviour have been amply investigated, but the ontogeny has received less attention. Here, we studied the ontogeny of cannibalistic behaviour in the tiny, blind predatory mite Amblyseius herbicolus. We found that individuals that were exposed to egg-cannibalizing adults when juvenile developed into cannibalistic adults more than 2.5 times as often as juveniles without such exposure. This was not due to their experience with eggs pierced by the adults: exposing juveniles to artificially pierced eggs did not result in increased cannibalism upon becoming adult. The exposure of juveniles to cannibalistic adults did not result in significant increases in juvenile mortality; hence, no selection against certain behavioural syndromes occurred during the juvenile stages. We therefore conclude that the experience with cannibalistic adults changed the behaviour of juveniles later in life. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study showing that witnessing cannibalism as juvenile results in a higher tendency to cannibalize as adult.
同类相食在动物王国中普遍存在。同类相食行为的进化和成因已得到充分研究，但个体发生过程却较少受到关注。在此，我们研究了微小的盲捕食螨草栖钝绥螨同类相食行为的个体发生过程。我们发现，幼螨在发育过程中接触过食卵成螨的个体，成年后成为同类相食者的频率是未接触过此类情况的幼螨的2.5倍多。这并非由于它们对被成螨刺破的卵有过体验：让幼螨接触人工刺破的卵并不会导致其成年后同类相食行为增加。幼螨接触同类相食的成螨并未导致幼螨死亡率显著增加；因此，在幼螨阶段没有针对某些行为综合征的选择发生。我们因此得出结论，接触同类相食的成螨的经历改变了幼螨日后的行为。据我们所知，这是第一项表明幼螨目睹同类相食会导致成年后同类相食倾向更高的研究。
