Experimentally-seeded social cues in the wild: Costs to bearers and potential benefits to receivers

Conspecifics can provide social cues about the presence of key features of the surrounding environment, such as food or predators. Attending to social cues may therefore potentially benefit receivers, or at least be worth following. Yet, bearing social cues could also be costly, particularly if it increases the likelihood of close-range interaction with non-kin. Here, we experimentally-seeded social cues in the wild onto focal individuals of the social hermit crab (Coenobita compressus), testing (1) the ‘potential benefits to receivers’ hypothesis, which predicts that receivers will follow social cues to orient towards valuable resources, and (2) the ‘costs to bearers’ hypothesis, which predicts that bearers of social cues will experience direct (physical) costs or indirect (constrained movement) costs due to interaction with receivers. Consistent with hypothesis (1), in natural encounters, conspecifics that crossed paths frequently made antennal contact, potentially gathering social in..., Study site
We conducted extended preliminary observations on highly social terrestrial hermit crabs (Coenobita compressus) in the wild from 2018 to 2022, using these observations as a foundation for the present study. The present study was carried out between January and March 2022 at the beach-forest interface of our long-term study site (Laidre 2010) in Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica (8°23'55.6\"N 83°20'52.8\"W), where this species occurs naturally in abundance and displays high social activity levels. Our study had three different parts (see below): (1) antennal contact during natural encounters, (2) overall attraction to chemical stimuli in dishes, and (3) experimentally-seeded social cues. All data, both observational and experimental, were collected by the first author between 0500 and 1600.
Antennal contact during natural encounters
To quantify how frequently individuals wandering the beach gathered chemo-tactile social cues via antennal contact we carried out focal and behavioral sampl..., , # Experimentally-seeded social cues in the wild: costs to bearers and potential benefits to receivers

The dataset provided is a study conducted in Jan - March 2022 in Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, at a long-term field site (Osa Conservation’s Piro Biological Station). The file includes a metadata section to help navigate the raw data from 3 related datasets, as well as screenshots of results.

Datasets include:

1\) Antennal contact

* Including: Sampling type (Focal, Behavioural); Number of encounters that resulted in antennal contact by no individuals, number of encounters that resulted in antennal contact by one individual, and number of encounters that resulted in antennal contact by two individuals (during each 5-minute sampling period); Total number of encounters throughout each 5-minute observation; Antennal contact rate per minute.

2\) Overall attraction to chemicals

* Including: What triplicate the experiment was a part of; What chemical stimuli was being tested (coconut ...