With or without you: Gut microbiota does not predict aggregation behavior in European earwig females

The reasons why some individuals are solitary and others gregarious are the subject of ongoing debate as we seek to understand the emergence of sociality. Recent studies suggest that the expression of aggregation behaviors may be linked to the gut microbiota of the host. Here, we tested this hypothesis in females of the European earwig. This insect is ideal for addressing this question, as adults both naturally vary in the degree to which they live in groups and show inter-individual variation in their gut microbial communities. We video-tracked 320 field-sampled females to quantify their natural variation in aggregation and then tested whether the most and least gregarious females had different gut microbiota. We also compared the general activity, boldness, body size, and body condition of these females and examined the association between each of these traits and the gut microbiota. Contrary to our predictions, we found no difference in the gut microbiota between the most and least g..., Animal sampling and laboratory rearing
We field sampled 1000 F. auricularia females and males in a peach orchard near Valence, France (Lat 44.9772790, Long 4.9286990) at the end of June 2022. All these individuals were sampled as mated adults and belonged to F. auricularia species “A” [1, 2]. Upon collection, the 1000 individuals were first mixed in a single plastic container and then randomly distributed among four other plastic containers of 100 females and 100 males each (called “test containers”) and two additional plastic containers of 100 females each (called “attraction containers”). The test container held females for which we then measured the aggregation level, general activity, boldness, fresh weight, and gut microbial diversity (see below). The attraction containers held females that served as stimuli for measuring aggregation levels. All plastic containers were grounded with moistened sand and cardboard shelters. Throughout the experiment, the animals were fed with carrot c..., , # With or without you: Gut microbiota does not predict aggregation behavior in European earwig females

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.z8w9ghxmm](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.z8w9ghxmm)

This repository provides all data necessary to reproduce the study of Cheutin MC, Lelclerc B, Meunier J. 2024 from *With or without you: Gut microbiota does not predict aggregation behavior in European earwig females*. Behavioral Ecology. Briefly, it contains the following data **(1)** a zip folder (\"**Aggregation_reads.gz.zip\"**) that contains the original 16s rRNA libraries (R1R2) not processed .fastq.gz format; **(2)** A sample table containing all information related to the female earwig hosts (behavioral and biological traits) (**\"env_data.txt\"**), **(3)** A metadata table containing each aggregation score per hour per individual (**\"meta_social.txt\"**), **(4)** an R phyloseq object (**ps_rff.RData**) used for the analyses.

We also provide two R scripts: **(1)** for *sequence processing* (called ...