Climate-mediated cooperation promotes niche expansion in burying beetles

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Abstract

The ability to form cooperative societies may explain why humans and social insects have come to dominate the earth. Here we examine the ecological consequences of cooperation by quantifying the fitness of cooperative (large groups) and non-cooperative (small groups) phenotypes in burying beetles (Nicrophorus nepalensis) along an elevational and temperature gradient. We experimentally created large and small groups along the gradient and manipulated interspecific competition with flies by heating carcasses. We show that cooperative groups performed as thermal generalists with similarly high breeding success at all temperatures and elevations, whereas non-cooperative groups performed as thermal specialists with higher breeding success only at intermediate temperatures and elevations. Studying the ecological consequences of cooperation may not only help us to understand why so many species of social insects have conquered the earth, but also to determine how climate change will affect the success of these and other social species, including our own.

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Syuan-Jyun Sun

Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Dustin R Rubenstein

Columbia University, New York, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Bo-Fei Chen

Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Shih-Fan Chan

Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Jian-Nan Liu

Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Mark Liu

Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Wenbe Hwang

National University of Tainan, Tainan, Taiwan

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Ping-Shih Yang

National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Sheng-Feng Shen

Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan

For correspondence
shensf@sinica.edu.tw

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All of the animals were handled according to approved Biosafety Committee protocols of the Academia Sinica. The protocol was approved by the Biosafety Committee of Academia Sinica (Permit Number:BSF0412-00002446).

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This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.