The evolutionary ecology of social responsiveness in a wild insect

• Applicant: Petri Niemelä, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 392873478

Acoustic communication represents one important way by which many animal species interact socially. Acoustic social interactions are often reciprocal; one individual produces a signal to which other individual then responds. However, there might be variation on how responsive individuals are on their acoustic responses towards their social neighbors. Some individuals can, for example, adjust its signals constantly according to acoustic signals of others while other individuals might be completely unresponsive. Studying social responsiveness is important since it widens our perspective on how variation in social responsiveness is evolved and maintained in the wild. Moreover, it has been recently shown that social interactions can affect the speed of evolution in ways not predicted by standard theories making social interaction important modifiers of evolution in ways not yet fully understood. Even though social interactions have far reaching ecological and evolutionary consequences, studies documenting lifetime fitness costs and benefits of social responsiveness are, nevertheless, absent for the wild. In my research project, I will use Field cricket (Gryllus campestris) to study ecology and evolution of social responsiveness in a natural population. For field crickets, acoustic signals represent the main source of information about the structure of the social environment; these sounds are used to signal competitive ability to males and attractiveness to females. Field crickets are extremely suitable study species for the proposed project because large numbers of acoustic output can be collected automatically for large numbers of individuals simultaneously. Moreover, the natural movements of individuals can readily be monitored automatically, which consequently allows for the measurement of acoustic signaling in large numbers of ecologically relevant, and variable, social contexts. In my project I aim to address the outstanding questions of i) whether individuals differ in social responsiveness ii) whether social responsiveness is under natural selection in the wild, and iii) whether individual differences in social responsiveness represent alternative reproductive tactics.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants