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

自查尔斯·达尔文的开创性工作以来，生物学家一直质疑社会行为的起源和维持：为什么个人为了他人的利益而牺牲自己的生殖成功？同时表现出社会行为和独居行为的蜜蜂物种为研究社会性的演变提供了一个独特的系统，以回答这一基本问题。PI将调查Halictus ruicundus的进化史，这是一种蜜蜂物种，在温暖气候地区群居，在寒冷气候地区独居。首先，PI希望通过检查社会群体和独居群体之间的遗传关系来确定该物种是否存在社会性的多个起源。其次，PI将在相反的环境条件下饲养群居和独居蜜蜂，以确定气候对社会行为的影响。最后，PI将检查来自群居和独居种群的个体行为的各个方面，以了解哪些特征是种群独有的，哪些是物种所有成员所共有的。这项工作解决了进化生物学中的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了什么角色？社会性对物种地理分布的影响是什么？一个群体的哪些特征允许在孤独行为和社交行为之间进行转换？

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?