Abstract Developmental plasticity is known to influence the mean behavioral phenotype of a population. Yet, studies on how developmental plasticity shapes patterns of variation within populations are comparatively rare and often focus on a subset of developmental cues (e.g., nutrition). One potentially important but understudied developmental experience is social experience, as it is explicitly hypothesized to increase variation among individuals as a way to promote “social niches.” To test this, we exposed juvenile black widow spiders (Latrodectus hesperus) to the silk of conspecifics by transplanting them onto conspecific webs for 48 h once a week until adulthood. We also utilized an untouched control group as well as a disturbed group. This latter group was removed from their web at the same time points as the social treatment, but was immediately placed back on their own web. After repeatedly measuring adult behavior and web structure, we found that social rearing drove higher or significant levels of repeatability relative to the other treatments. Repeatability in the social treatment also decreased in some traits, paralleling the decreases observed in the disturbed treatments. Thus, repeated juvenile disturbance may decrease among-individual differences in adult spiders. Yet, social rearing appeared to override the effect of disturbance in some traits, suggesting a prioritization effect. The resulting individual differences were maintained over at least one-third of the adult lifespan and thus appear to represent stable, canalized developmental effects and not temporal state differences. These results provide proximate insight into how a broader range of developmental experiences shape trait variation.

中文翻译：

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青少年的社会经历会产生行为变化的差异，但不会产生平均值

摘要 众所周知，发育可塑性会影响群体的平均行为表型。然而，关于发育可塑性如何塑造群体内变异模式的研究相对较少，并且通常集中于发育线索的子集（例如营养）。一种潜在重要但尚未得到充分研究的发展经验是社会经验，因为它被明确假设为增加个体之间的差异，作为促进“社会利基”的一种方式。为了测试这一点，我们将幼年黑寡妇蜘蛛（Latrodectus hesperus）暴露在同种蜘蛛丝中，每周一次将它们移植到同种蜘蛛网上 48 小时，直到成年。我们还利用了未受影响的对照组和受到干扰的组。后者在社会待遇的同时被从他们的网络中删除，但立即被放回到他们自己的网络上。在反复测量成人行为和网络结构后，我们发现，相对于其他治疗方法，社会养育导致更高或显着水平的可重复性。社会治疗的重复性在某些特征上也有所下降，与干扰治疗中观察到的下降相似。因此，反复的幼年干扰可能会减少成年蜘蛛的个体差异。然而，社会教养似乎克服了某些特征的干扰影响，这表明存在优先效应。由此产生的个体差异在成人寿命的至少三分之一内得以维持，因此似乎代表了稳定的、渠道化的发育效应，而不是时间状态差异。这些结果提供了对更广泛的发展经历如何塑造性状变异的深入了解。