A chemically triggered transition from conflict to cooperation in burying beetles

Citations Over TimeTop 10% of 2020 papers

Abstract

Abstract Although interspecific competition has long been recognised as a major driver of trait divergence and adaptive evolution, relatively little effort has focused on how it influences the evolution of intraspecific cooperation. Here we identify the mechanism by which the perceived pressure of interspecific competition influences the transition from intraspecific conflict to cooperation in a facultative cooperatively breeding species, the Asian burying beetle Nicrophorus nepalensis . We not only found that beetles are more cooperative at carcasses when blowfly maggots have begun to digest the tissue, but that this social cooperation appears to be triggered by a single chemical cue – dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) – emitted from carcasses consumed by blowflies, but not from control carcasses lacking blowflies. Our results provide experimental evidence that interspecific competition promotes the transition from intraspecific conflict to cooperation in N. nepalensis via a surprisingly simple social chemical cue that is a reliable indicator of resource competition between species.

Related Papers

• → Competition and coexistence in plant communities: intraspecific competition is stronger than interspecific competition(2018)561 cited
• → Accounting for interspecific competition and age structure in demographic analyses of density dependence improves predictions of fluctuations in population size(2019)26 cited
• → Species coexistence under resource competition with intraspecific and interspecific direct competition in a chemostat(2010)7 cited
• → Interspecific competition in perennial sedentary organisms: An individual‐based model(2022)2 cited
• Study on intraspecific and interspecific competition of Pinus taiwanensis(2008)