DISSERTATION RESEARCH: The Causes and Consequences of Behavioral Polymorphism in a Facultatively Social Bee

自从查尔斯达尔文的开创性工作以来，生物学家一直在质疑社会行为的起源和维持：为什么个体会为了他人的利益而牺牲自己的生殖成功？ 同时表现出社会性和孤独行为的蜜蜂物种为研究社会性的进化提供了一个独特的系统，以回答这个基本问题。 PI将调查Halictus rubicundus的进化历史，Halictus rubicundus是一种蜜蜂物种，在温暖的气候地区是社会性的，在寒冷的气候地区是孤独的。 首先，通过研究群居和独居种群之间的遗传关系，PI希望确定这个物种中是否有多个社会性起源。 第二，PI将在相反的环境条件下饲养社会和孤独的蜜蜂，以确定气候对社会行为的影响。 最后，PI将研究来自社会和孤独种群的个体行为的各个方面，以了解哪些特征是种群所独有的，哪些特征是物种所有成员所共有的。这项工作解决了进化生物学中几个长期存在的基本问题：环境因素在社会行为的进化中扮演什么角色？ 社会性对一个物种的地理分布有什么影响？一个种群有哪些特征可以允许从孤独行为过渡到社会行为？

Ever since the pioneering work of Charles Darwin, biologists have questioned the origin and maintenance of social behavior: why do individuals sacrifice their own reproductive success for the benefit of others? Bee species that demonstrate both social and solitary behavior provide a unique system for studying the evolution of sociality in order to answer this basic question. The PI will investigate the evolutionary history of Halictus rubicundus, a bee species that is social in areas of warm climate and solitary in areas of cold climate. First, by examining the genetic relationships among social and solitary populations the PI hopes to determine whether there have been multiple origins of sociality in this species. Second, the PI will rear social and solitary bees under reversed environmental conditions to determine the effect of climate on social behavior. Finally, the PI will examine various aspects of the behavior of individuals from social and solitary populations in order to understand which characteristics are unique to a population, and which are shared among all members of the species. This work addresses several long-standing, fundamental questions in evolutionary biology: What role do environmental factors play in the evolution of social behavior? What are the consequences of sociality on the geographic distribution of a species? And what are some of the characteristics of a population that permit the transitions between solitary and social behavior?