Evolution of Complex Colony Structure in Social Insects

非技术综述，赫伯斯，J·IBN-9507377社会昆虫复杂群体结构的进化社会行为是个体间相互作用的产物。社会制度是在物种内部进化的行为特征的复合体，这些行为特征是对某些环境条件的反应。这个项目的目标是了解特定的环境条件如何影响昆虫的社会系统。PI之前曾研究过两个森林蚂蚁种群--桃金娘斑点蚁。佛蒙特州伯灵顿附近的一个种群，蚂蚁群中只有一只蚁后和她所有的女儿工蚁。在这些蜂群中，蜂王产卵，工蚁照顾它们，觅食，保持鸟巢清洁，等等。纽约奥尔巴尼附近的第二个人口在社会制度上与佛蒙特州的人口有很大的不同。在那里，一个蜂群可以包含一个蜂王家庭和一个单独的工蚁家庭。两个完全不同的家庭住在一起，一个家庭负责产卵，另一个家庭负责工作。本项目的目标是了解驱使佛蒙特州和纽约州人口朝着两个不同方向发展的环境条件。研究人员将在一项大型野外实验中操纵食物的可用性和筑巢地点的可用性。通过绘制整个为期三年的实验中巢穴占有率和生殖生物学的图表，他们应该能够确定这两个环境因素是否以及如何影响社会制度。PI还将继续对该物种进行详细的基因工作。她将克隆DNA，以找到合适的标记用于基因实验。这些DNA标记将提供谁是蚂蚁的母亲，谁是蚂蚁巢中工蚁和繁殖者的父亲的信息。有了这些数据，就有可能衡量社会制度遗传决定因素的重要性。

Non-technical Summary, Herbers, J. IBN-9507377 Evolution of Complex Colony Structure in Social Insects Social behavior is the outgrowth of interactions among individuals. Social systems are complexes of behavioral traits that have evolved within a species in response to certain environmental conditions. The goal of this project is to understand how particular environmental conditions affect social systems in insects. The PI has previously studied two populations of the forest ant Myrmica punctiventris. One population near Burlington Vermont, has ant colonies that contain a single queen and all her daughter workers. Within those colonies the queen lays her eggs, and the workers care for them, forage for food, keep the nest clean, and so on. A second population near Albany, New York is vastly different in its social system from the Vermont population. There, a colony can contain a family of queens and a separate family of workers. Two completely different families share living quarters, with one family dominating the egg-laying and the second family doing the work. The goal of the present project is to understand the environmental conditions that have driven the Vermont and New York populations in two such different directions. The researchers will manipulate food availability and availability of nesting sites in a large field experiment. By charting occupancy of nests and reproductive biology throughout the three-year experiment, they should be able to determine if and how these two environmental factors affect social systems. The PI will also will continue detailed genetic work on this species. She will clone DNA to find suitable markers to use in genetic experiments. These DNA markers will yield information on who is the mother and who is the father of workers and reproductives in ant nests. With these data, it will be possible to measure the importance of genetic determinants of social systems as well.