Data from: Prey or protection? Access to food alters individual responses to competition in black widow spiders
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Animals influence the phenotype and reproductive success of their conspecifics through competitive interactions. Such effects of competition can alter the intensity of selection and ultimately change the rate of evolution. However, the magnitude of the effects of competition, and their evolutionary impact, should vary depending on environmental conditions and individual responses among competitors. We tested whether a key environmental variable, resource availability, affects the response to competition in black widow spiders by manipulating access to prey and the level of competition. We examined if focal spiders modify their web structure and aggressiveness towards prey stimuli when a competitor is present, and whether these responses depend on prior prey access. We also tested if any effects of competition vary with individual differences among competitors. Access to resources changed how individuals respond to competition. Spiders with limited access to prey were less likely to attack prey stimuli in the presence of a conspecific competitor than spiders with greater access to prey, suggesting that limiting resources hinders competitive responses. In contrast, all spiders built better-protected webs in the presence of competitors, regardless of prior access to prey. Crucially, these responses differed among focal spiders and depended on individual competitors. Our findings highlight the importance of environmental conditions and individual differences in mediating the impact of social interactions on phenotypes and eventually on their evolution.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.025 | 0.013 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".