Data from: Can recent social evolutionary history promote resilience to environmental change?

Principles of social evolution have long been used retrospectively to
interpret social interactions, but have less commonly been applied
predictively to inform conservation and animal husbandry strategies. We
investigate whether differences in developmental environment, facilitated
by divergent social conditions, can predict resilience to environmental
change. Upon exposure to harsh novel environments, populations that
previously experienced more benign social environments are predicted
either to suffer fitness losses (the “mutation load hypothesis” and
“selection filter hypothesis”) or maintain fitness (the “beneficial
mutation hypothesis”). We tested these contrasting predictions using
populations of burying beetles Nicrophorus vespilloides we had evolved
experimentally for 45 generations under contrasting social environments by
manipulating the supply of post-hatching parental care. We exposed
sexually immature adults from each population to varying heat stress and
measured the effect on survival and reproduction. The greater the level of
parental care previously experienced by a population, the better its
survival under heat stress during sexual maturation. Although this is
consistent with the “beneficial mutation hypothesis”, it is also possible
that populations that had evolved without post-hatching care were simply
more prone to dying during maturation, regardless of their thermal
environment. Overall, we suggest that stochastic genetic variation,
probably due to founder effects, had a stronger influence on resilience.
We discuss the implications for translocation and captive breeding
programmes.