Data from: Animal personality in a foundation species drives community divergence and collapse in the wild

1. Despite thousands of papers on the topic, precious few of the studies on animal personality have considered the role of personality in shaping community-level processes. Here, we test the effect of individual variation on the long-term trajectories of biological communities, from initiation to their demise. The spider Anelosimus studiosus builds webs that serve as habitat for >50 species of spider, which together construct a species-rich silken reef. This species also exhibits a temporally consistent behavioural polymorphism where females exhibit either an aggressive or docile phenotype (personality). 2. In this study, we established incipient colonies of either two docile or two aggressive females and then tracked community succession and persistence over 7 years in the field. In particular, we noted the community compositions associated with colony extinction/collapse events, which are common in this species. 3. The community composition of webs founded by different phenotypes diverged rapidly in their early successional stages. However, this period of divergence was ephemeral and all communities eventually converged on a similar composition; communities founded by aggressive females merely took longer to reach it. This secondary stage of community convergence was itself short-lived and independent of founders' personality; all communities collapsed within a year of achieving it. 4. Experimentally imposing this fatal climax composition on colonies caused 80% of communities to collapse within a year, suggesting that this climax composition actually causes the collapse of the community. Community collapse was characterized by a complete die-off of the foundation species and the dispersal of all other spiders. Thus, the behavioural traits of the founding, foundational individuals of these communities dictate their path of succession and longevity in the wild.1. 尽管该领域已有数千篇研究论文，但关于动物个性（animal personality）的研究中，极少有探讨个性在群落水平过程塑造中所扮演的角色。本研究旨在探究个体差异对生物群落从建立到消亡的长期动态轨迹的影响。蜘蛛Anelosimus studiosus所结蛛网可为超过50种蜘蛛提供栖息场所，这些蜘蛛共同构筑出物种丰富的丝质礁群。该物种还存在时间上稳定的行为多态性：雌性个体表现出攻击性（aggressive）或温顺性（docile）两种表型（即个性）。 2. 本研究中，我们分别建立由两只温顺雌性或两只攻击性雌性构成的初始群落，并在野外对群落演替与存续情况进行了长达7年的追踪监测。尤为关键的是，我们记录了与群落灭绝/崩溃事件相关的群落组成特征——这类事件在该物种中十分常见。 3. 由不同表型雌性建立的蛛网对应的群落组成，在演替早期便快速出现分化。然而这一分化阶段转瞬即逝，所有群落最终均收敛至相似的组成结构；由攻击性雌性建立的群落仅需更长时间便可达到该稳态。这一群落组成收敛的次级阶段本身同样短暂，且与建群者的个性无关——所有群落达到该阶段后的一年内均发生了崩溃。 4. 实验性地将这种致命的顶极群落组成引入群落后，80%的群落在一年内发生崩溃，这表明该顶极组成实则是群落崩溃的诱因。群落崩溃的特征为：建群种（foundation species）完全死亡，其余所有蜘蛛均扩散离去。由此可见，这些群落的建群奠基个体的行为性状，决定了其野外的演替路径与存续时长。