Data from: Social tipping points in animal societies in response to heat stress

Living systems sometimes experience abrupt tipping points in response to
stress. Here we investigate the factors contributing to the appearance of
such abrupt state transitions in animal societies. We first construct a
mathematical account of how the personality compositions of societies
could alter their propensity to shift from calm to violent states in
response to thermal stress. To evaluate our model, we subjected
experimental societies of the spider Anelosimus studiosus to heat stress.
We demonstrate that both colony size and personality composition influence
the timing of and recoverability from sudden transitions in social state.
Groups composed of aggressive personalities transitioned into violent
within-group dynamics sooner during heating, and also resisted recovery to
baseline non-aggressive behaviour during cooling. We further observed
hysteresis in groups composed of aggressive individuals, where group
behaviour depended strongly on whether the colony had previously been in a
calm or agitated state. These results demonstrate that a society’s
susceptibility to sudden state shifts and their recoverability from them
can be driven by the personalities of their constituents.