Specialization and Coordination of Individuals in a Complex Activity

在群居昆虫中，群体成员专门从事群体生长、防御和繁殖所需的不同任务是一条普遍规律。以前大多数关于工人劳动分工的研究都局限于对“种姓”水平的分析，“种姓”是指在很长一段时间内扮演特定角色的工人群体。然而，最近的一些证据表明，一个种姓的个体成员之间的行为差异可能在群体如何组织工作中起着不可或缺的作用。珍妮博士的研究将把对群居昆虫群体工作组织的分析深入到个体层面。总体目标是了解蜂群对突发事件的反应，这种突发事件在全球层面上似乎是确定的（确定的），是如何从个体工蜂的反应中组合起来的，这些反应似乎是特殊的和概率的。珍妮博士将分析一种热带黄蜂的筑巢行为，他已经对这种黄蜂做了详细的初步研究。在他的总体目标中，他有两个目标。第一个目标是确定个体筑巢变异的特征和行为相关性。实验将在单独标记的工人身上进行，在社会环境中工作，以确定他们的活动水平是否与年龄和不同的个体对释放筑巢活动的刺激的反应阈值有关。第二个目标是通过实验测试假设的调节筑巢行为的机制。最终的结果将是理解鸟巢建造系统对刺激的反应，反馈途径，以及参与活动的工人之间的沟通模式。到目前为止，我们对群居昆虫复杂活动的协调所了解的情况，与西德尼·布伦纳和他的同事们对简单生物体的发育所发现的情况相似，即“组装的语法”很大程度上取决于系统各组成部分之间的相互作用。为群居昆虫指定这种语法是本研究的最终目标。

It is a general rule among social insects that colony members specialize on different tasks required for the growth, defense, and reproduction of the colony. Most previous studies of division of labor among workers have limited analysis to the level of the "caste," the group of workers performing a given role for a prolonged period of time. However, some recent evidence suggests that behavioral differences among individual members of a caste may play an integral role in how the colony organizes work. Dr. Jeanne's research will take the analysis of the organization of work in social-insect colonies down to the level of the individual. The overall goal is to understand how the colony's response to a contingency, which at the global level appears to be deterministic (certain), is put together from the responses of individual workers, which appear to be idiosyncratic and probabilistic. Dr. Jeanne will analyze nest-construction behavior of a species of tropical wasp on which he has already done detailed preliminary work. He has two objectives within his overall goal. The first objective is to determine the characteristics and behavioral correlates of individual variability in nest construction. Experiments will be conducted on individually marked workers, working within the social context, to determine if their levels of activity are related to age and to different individual thresholds of response to the stimuli that release nest-construction activities. The second objective is to experimentally test for mechanisms hypothesized to regulate nest-construction behavior. The end result will be an understanding of the nest-construction system in terms of responses to stimuli, feedback pathways, and modes of communication among workers engaged in the activity. What we know so far about the coordination of complex activities of social insects suggests a parallel with what Sydney Brenner and his associates are finding out about development in simple organisms, namely that much of the "grammar of assembly" lies in the interaction among the component parts of the system. Specifying this grammar for a social insect is the ultimate goal of this research.