Group Dynamics and Colony Size

群体动态和群体规模

• 批准号: 9514010
• 负责人: Robert Jeanne
• 金额: $ 21.2万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-03-01 至 2001-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9514010&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Group; Dynamics; Colony; Size

Abstract Jeanne 9514010 The number of workers in some social insect colonies can reach millions, yet they cooperate with one another and the colonies smoothly accomplish all their necessary tasks. It has recently been discovered for a tropical social wasp that the larger the colony, the greater its productive output per worker. This pattern contradicts previous understanding and has direct implications for the evolution of colony size. The purpose of the proposed research is to learn how the behavior of workers in large colonies is organized differently from that of small colonies and how these differences give rise to the differences in productivity. The research will be conducted on colonies in the field. New colonies are founded by swarms of workers and queens. Newly-founded colonies of different sizes will be made to repair nest damage to provide data on numbers of workers performing each type of work and their individual rates of work. Experimental manipulation of nest repair activity will be used to reveal the behavioral cues workers use to make decisions about whether to become active or idle. At the end of 25 days the colonies will be collected and the size measured (number of workers). The behavioral results will be correlated with colony size to determine how the changes in behavior at different colony size translate into per capita differences in output. The results of this study will explain the relationship between the behavior of group members and group size. The resulting knowledge of the underlying mechanisms will enhance our understanding of the evolution of large colony size in social insects and may provide insights into how human groups organize.

摘要 珍妮9514010 有些群居昆虫的工蜂数量可达数百万，但它们彼此合作，使蜂群顺利地完成所有必要的任务。 最近发现，一种热带群居黄蜂的殖民地越大，工蜂的生产量就越大。 这种模式与以前的理解相矛盾，并对殖民地规模的演变有直接影响。 拟议研究的目的是了解大殖民地的工人的行为是如何组织的不同，从小殖民地，以及这些差异如何导致生产力的差异。 这项研究将在实地进行。 新的殖民地是由成群的工蜂和蚁后建立的。 新建立的不同大小的殖民地将被用来修复巢穴损坏，以提供执行每种工作的工人数量及其个人工作率的数据。 巢修复活动的实验操作将被用来揭示行为线索的工人使用，以决定是否成为活跃或闲置。 在25天结束时，将收集菌落并测量大小（工蜂数量）。 行为结果将与群体规模相关，以确定不同群体规模下的行为变化如何转化为人均产出差异。 本研究的结果将解释群体成员行为与群体规模之间的关系。 由此产生的知识的基本机制将提高我们的理解大的群体规模的社会昆虫的进化，并可能提供洞察人类群体如何组织。