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Familiarity with adults, but not relatedness, affects the growth of juvenile red-backed salamanders (Plethodon cinereus)

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Abstract

The relative roles of kinship and familiarity in affecting an individual’s growth and fitness are not easy to disentangle. Not only is an individual more likely to have prior behavioral interactions with conspecifics in close proximity, it may also be related (in terms of kinship) to those nearby conspecifics. While some studies have inferred that kin discrimination affects fitness correlates, other studies found that familiarity alone can reduce aggressive interactions, thus increasing fitness. These studies have all focused on intra-age class pairs or groups. However, many animals interact with conspecifics from different cohorts. In many populations, adults of Plethodon cinereus territorially defend rocks and logs that retain moisture and food resources. We investigated whether juveniles of P. cinereus grew more in the presence of adults that were relatives or familiar. We collected pairs of juveniles and adults found under the same cover objects in the forest (familiar) and pairs of juveniles and adults found under different cover objects, approximately 10 m apart (unfamiliar). We determined parentage and relatedness of the adult–juvenile pairs and then placed these pairs in semi-natural mesocosms for 17 days. We found that juveniles housed with familiar adults had significantly greater increases in mass and snout–vent length than juveniles housed with unfamiliar adults in 2006 but not in 2007. Relatedness had no effect on growth. In addition, juveniles cohabitating with adults were not more likely to be their offspring. At least under certain environmental conditions, familiarity with adults, independent of relatedness or parentage, increased the growth of juvenile salamanders.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Butch Brodie, Henry Wilbur, and Eric Nagy of Mountain Lake Biological Station (MLBS) for the use of the facilities. We thank Alex Roberts and Britt Ousterhout for assistance with setting up the mesocosms and collecting salamanders. We also thank Kelly Hemminger and Molly Potempkin for invaluable work in the laboratory. Dan Sloan and Stephen Keller provided assistance with the use of the ABI 3130 and Genemapper. Comments from Tami Ransom, Butch Brodie, Janis Antonovics, David Carr, and two anonymous referees greatly improved the quality of this manuscript. EBL was supported by a Presidential Fellowship at the University of Virginia (UVA) while working on this study. MLBS provided Research Fellowships in the summers of 2006 and 2007. Funding for laboratory work was provided by NSF DEB-0235695 to David Marsh and PRC. Fieldwork was conducted under Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries permit nos. 026019 (2006) and 030986 (2007) and ACUC Protocol No. 3581, which was approved by the UVA Animal Care and Use Committee.

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Virginia, P.O. Box 400328, Charlottesville, VA, 22904, USA

    Eric B. Liebgold

  2. Department of Biology, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, USA

    Paul R. Cabe

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  1. Eric B. Liebgold
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Correspondence to Eric B. Liebgold.

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Communicated by J. Christensen-Dalsgaard

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Liebgold, E.B., Cabe, P.R. Familiarity with adults, but not relatedness, affects the growth of juvenile red-backed salamanders (Plethodon cinereus). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 63, 277–284 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-008-0659-4

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