Parental and personal experience drive personality formation and individual niche diversification in group-living mites

The idea of individual niche specialization suggests that individuals should diversify in their realized niches to mitigate inter-individual conflict. We tested the hypothesis that parental and early-life diet experiences drive individual foraging specialization and animal personality formation in plant-inhabiting predatory mites <i>Phytoseiulus persimilis</i> and <i>Phytoseiulus macropilis</i>. Both species are specialized predators of herbivorous spider mites. Adult females and males, whose parents had been exposed to either prey eggs or mobile prey, and/or who themselves had experienced either eggs or mobile prey during juvenile development, were tested for their prey life stage preference, and exploration and activity patterns. Parental and/or personal experience of a given prey life stage exerted species- and sex-dependent effects on the adult predators' mean and individual foraging phenotypes, with parental plus early-life effects being the strongest. Repeatability in activity and exploration was linked to prey life stage preference, pointing at co-variation of personality formation and individualized foraging niches.