Biology subjects

Kuijper, B.

Publications and source records attributed to Kuijper, B..

9 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Weber's law of proportional processing influences coevolution of ornaments and preferences in models of sexual selection

Mate preferences are often influenced by the magnitude of sexual signals, which are presumed to indicate underlying aspects of signaller quality. Although the perception of these signals depends on sensory processes, the role of perceptual adaptations and constraints in mate assessment is frequently overlooked. Many sensory systems follow Webers law of proportional processing, where discrimination between signals is based upon their proportional, or relative, difference rather than their absolute difference. Because preference strength varies with relative trait magnitude, Webers law could strongly influence sexual selection, changing the coevolution of traits and preferences. Here, we explore the consequences of Webers law for sexual selection using individual-based models, applying Scalar Utility Theory to mate choice. We investigate the coevolution of male ornaments and female preferences under both Fisherian and good genes scenarios, as well as scrutinizing the sexual selection of multiple ornaments and preferences. Including Webers law in these models either reduced ornament exaggeration, or promoted exaggeration and diversification of ornaments and preferences, depending on the costs of choice and how rapidly female survival decreases when preferences evolve away from the naturally selected optimum. These results highlight the importance of perception and cognitive processing in shaping sexual selection and its evolutionary impacts.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2026

Sublethal exposure to the insecticide chlorantraniliprole does not alter antipredator behaviour in wild field crickets

Pesticide exposure has been proposed as a major driver of global insect declines. Sublethal effects occur when non-fatal pesticide exposure disrupts behaviour or physiology in ways that may reduce survival or reproductive success. However, most evidence for sublethal effects comes from laboratory studies under controlled conditions. We tested whether exposure to a sublethal dose of chlorantraniliprole, a widely used diamide insecticide known for its long environmental persistence, affects antipredator escape behaviours in wild field crickets (Gryllus campestris). Adult crickets were treated with either pesticide or a sham control. They then underwent behavioural tests in the wild. Following a simulated predator attack, we measured two key behaviours: escape speed and subsequent latency to re-emerge from their burrow. We found no consistent effects of pesticide exposure on either behaviour. Re-emergence latency increased over successive days across both groups, while escape speed did not change. Re-emergence latency showed greater individual variability than escape speed. This likely reflects its role as a risk-assessment behaviour, which is more context-dependent than escape speed. Our findings challenge the assumption, largely derived from laboratory assays, that sublethal pesticide exposure universally impairs insect behaviour. Overall, our results underscore the need to integrate environmental context when evaluating pesticide impacts on insect behaviour.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Evolution of behavioural flexibility and the forming and breaking of habits

The formation of habits, whereby learnt actions come to be performed automatically with repetition and practice, is a well-established focus for studies in psychology. This contrasts with evolutionarily motivated studies of learning, which typically view behavior as either learnt or fixed, to elucidate the ecological conditions where each predominates. Here, we envisage habit formation functioning to free up limited mental resources (e.g., attention), potentially improving an individuals ability to multitask. As an ecologically relevant case, we investigate exploration-exploitation in foraging under predation risk. In our model, a forager does not know the quality of feeding options, but can learn from the rewards they give. When the environment occasionally changes, individuals can attend to exploration of feeding options in the new conditions. The options can then become habitually exploited, freeing attention for antipredatory vigilance. Via evolutionary simulations, we show that evolutionarily stable forming and breaking of foraging habits can substantially reduce mortality from predation, without drastically reducing foraging success, when environmental conditions remain stable enough between changes. We identify factors promoting habit formation, such as the repetition of actions that yield predictable rewards, and also discuss the role of habits more generally, including their relation to ideas about bounded rationality in theories of decision making. In conclusion, we argue that exploration-exploitation strategies involving the forming and breaking of habits are a type of behavioral flexibility that is likely to be selected for under a range of ecological conditions. Significance statementThe forming and breaking of habits has long been a focus of study in psychology, as well as appearing in many discussions about human behavior. Surprisingly, the topic has been virtually absent from evolutionary studies of learning in non-human animals, despite featuring prominently in Darwins discussion of the evolution of species-specific behaviors. Our aim is to change this, by theoretically investigating a possible evolutionary explanation for habits, namely that habits enhance an individuals ability to multitask. We model the combination of foraging and antipredator vigilance, which is important for many animal species in their natural environments. We conclude that the forming and breaking of habits can promote behavioral flexibility, helping animals to achieve important tasks in different environments.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Trait-specific responses to repeated stressor exposure in wild crickets

Habituation allows animals to reduce their responsiveness to repeated, non-threatening stimuli. While well-studied in vertebrates, little is known about how wild insects adjust their behaviour to repeated stressors in natural settings. This study tested whether wild field crickets (Gryllus campestris) habituate or sensitise to repeated simulated predator attacks, and whether these effects vary with threat intensity. Crickets showed limited evidence of habituation. Emergence time increased slightly over repeated exposures, consistent with modest sensitisation, while post-emergence distance also increased, suggesting a modest habituation effect. Escape speed remained stable. Our results suggest trait-specific behavioural plasticity, as only some response measures changed across repeated exposures while others remained stable. Crickets ranged further from the burrow in response to the stronger stimulus, suggesting greater comfort or reduced perceived risk, though emergence latency and escape speed were unaffected by stimulus intensity. Contrary to our predictions, individual crickets did not respond consistently across the two stimulus types. While some increased their emergence time or post-emergence distance more under one stimulus than the other, others showed little or no change. These patterns suggest that only certain behaviours were flexible, and that individuals varied in how strongly they adjusted these behaviours. Escape speed, by contrast, remained stable. Together, these results indicate limited habituation, trait-specific flexibility, and substantial individual variation in how crickets respond to repeated disturbance, highlighting the diverse strategies animals may use to manage risk in unpredictable environments.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2020

The evolution of social learning as phenotypic cue integration

Most analyses of the origins of cultural evolution focus on when and where social learning prevails over individual learning, overlooking the fact that there are other developmental inputs that influence phenotypic fit to the selective environment. This raises the question how the presence of other cue channels affects the scope for social learning. Here, we present a model that considers the simultaneous evolution of (i) multiple forms of social learning (involving vertical or horizontal learning based on either prestige or conformity biases) within the broader context of other evolving inputs on phenotype determination, including (ii) heritable epigenetic factors, (iii) individual learning, (iv) environmental and cascading maternal effects, (v) conservative bet-hedging and (vi) genetic cues. In fluctuating environments that are autocorrelated (and hence predictable), we find that social learning from members of the same generation (horizontal social learning) explains the large majority of phenotypic variation, whereas other cues are much less important. Moreover, social learning based on prestige biases typically prevails in positively autocorrelated environments, whereas conformity biases prevail in negatively autocorrelated environments. Only when environments are unpredictable or horizontal social learning is characterised by an intrinsically low information content, other cues such as conservative bet-hedging or vertical prestige biases prevail.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2019

The evolution of parental effects when selection acts on fecundity versus viability

Most predictions on the evolution of adaptive parental effects and phenotypic memory exclusively focus on the role of the abiotic environment. How parental effects are affected by population demography and life history is less well understood. To overcome this, we use an analytical model to assess whether selection acting on fecundity versus viability affects the evolution of parental effects in a viscous population experiencing a spatiotemporally varying environment. We find that parental effects commonly evolve in regimes of viability selection, but are less likely to evolve in regimes of fecundity selection. In regimes of viability selection, an individuals phenotype becomes correlated with its local environment during its lifetime, as those individuals with a locally adapted phenotype are more likely to survive until parenthood. Hence, a parental phenotype rapidly becomes an informative cue about its local environment, favoring the evolution of parental effects. By contrast, in regimes of fecundity selection, locally maladapted and adapted parents survive at equal rates, so that the parental phenotype, by itself, is not informative about the local environment. Correlations between phenotype and environment still arise, but only when more fecund, locally adapted individuals leave more successfully established offspring to the local patch. Hence, correlations take at least two generations to develop, making them more sensitive to distortion by environmental change or competition with immigrant offspring. Hence, we conclude that viability selection is most conducive to the evolution of adaptive parental effects in spatially structured populations.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2018

The Evolution of Early-Life Effects on Social Behaviour - Why Should Social Adversity Carry Over to the Future?

Numerous studies have shown that social adversity in early life can have long-lasting negative consequences for social behaviour in adulthood, consequences that may in turn be propagated to future generations. Given these intergenerational effects, it is puzzling why natural selection might favour such sensitivity to an individuals early social environment. To address this question, we model the evolution of social sensitivity in the development of in helping behaviours, showing that natural selection indeed favours individuals whose tendency to help others is dependent on early-life social experience. We find that natural selection typically favours positive social feedbacks, in which individuals who received more help in early life are also more likely to help others in adulthood, while individuals who received no early-life help develop low tendencies to helping others later in life. This positive social sensitivity is favoured because of an intergenerational relatedness feedback: patches with many helpers tend to be more productive, leading to higher relatedness within the local group, which in turn favours higher levels of help in the next generation.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Ecological genetic conflict between specialism and plasticity through genomic islands of divergence

There can be genetic conflict between genome elements differing in transmission patterns, and thus in evolutionary interests. We show here that the concept of genetic conflict provides new insight into local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity. Local adaptation to heterogeneous habitats sometimes occurs as tightly linked clusters of genes with among-habitat polymorphism, referred to as genomic islands of divergence, and our work sheds light on their evolution. Phenotypic plasticity can also influence the divergence between ecotypes, through developmental responses to habitat-specificcues. We show that clustered genes coding for ecological specialism and unlinked generalist genes coding for phenotypic plasticity differ in their evolutionary interest. This is an ecological genetic conflict, operating between habitat specialism and phenotypically plastic generalism. The phenomenon occurs both for single traits and for syndromes of co-adapted traits. Using individual-based simulations and numerical analysis, we investigate how among-habitat genetic polymorphism and phenotypic plasticity depend on genetic architecture. We show that for plasticity genes that are unlinked to a genomic island of divergence, the slope of a reaction norm will be steeper in comparison with the slope favored by plasticity genes that are tightly linked to genes for local adaptation.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2017

Maternal Effects and Parent-Offspring Conflict

Maternal effects can provide offspring with reliable information about the environment they are likely to experience, but also offer scope for maternal manipulation of young when interests diverge between parents and offspring. To predict the impact and outcome of parent-offspring conflict, we model the evolution of maternal effects on local adaptation of young. We find that parent-offspring conflict strongly influences the stability of maternal effects; moreover, the nature of the disagreement between parents and young predicts how conflict is resolved: when mothers favour less extreme mixtures of phenotypes relative to offspring (i.e., when mothers stand to gain by hedging their bets), mothers win the conflict by providing offspring with only limited amounts of information. When offspring favour overproduction of one and the same phenotype across all environments compared to mothers (e.g., when offspring favour a larger body size), neither side wins the conflict and signaling breaks down. Only when offspring favour less extreme mixtures relative to their mothers (the case we consider least likely), offspring win the conflict and obtain full information about the state of the environment. We conclude that a partial or complete breakdown of informative maternal effects will be the norm rather than the exception in the presence of parent-offspring conflict.

evolutionary biology↗