Dissertation Research: Population Biology of the Eastern Tent Caterpillar

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Eastern tent caterpillars live communally in silken tents which they construct cooperatively in cherry and apple trees. They also cooperate in the search for food, communicating their funds to tentmates via chemical trails. Their social organization both the question of how this cooperative system evolved the eastern tent caterpillar is the only non-eusocial insect known to employ a complex chemical communication system for corperative foraging the origin of which poses some problems for classical selection theory based on individual fitness. Taking advantage of the ease with which colonies can be sampled in the field and studied in the laboratory, genetic relationships between and within colonies and behavioral preferences of individual caterpillars for tentmates and tents will be measure. The patterns observed should some light on the likely made of evolution of the eastern tent caterpillar social system.