Dissertation Research: Phylogeny and Evolution of Subsocial Behavior in the New World Treehopper Subfamily Membracinae (Homoptera: Membracidae)

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0104893Danforth and Lin Insects in the New World treehopper subfamily Membracinae (5 tribes, 38 genera and about 447 species) show a range of social behavior from (1) solitary individuals, to (2) nymphal or adult aggregations, to (3) highly developed maternal care with parent/offspring communication via substrate-borne vibrations. The behavioral variation in membracine treehoppers provides an excellent opportunity to study the evolution of subsocial behavior in insects. However, our current knowledge on the evolution of subsocial behavior in this group is limited because of an incomplete picture of their phylogenetic relationships. We don't know how many times maternal care has evolved, whether maternal care gives rise to solitary behavior, or exactly how complex forms of maternal care involving communication and signalling have evolved. In order to more fully understand the historical patterns of social evolution in membracine treehoppers, a phylogenetic study of this group will be conducted using both morphological and molecular (DNA sequences from nuclear and mitochondrial genes) data by graduate student Chung-Ping Lin under the guidance of Dr. Bryan Danforth at Cornell University. New collections will be made from South America to augment existing samples and museum holdings. The results of phylogenetic analyses will provide a historical framework to reconstruct the likely direction of behavioral character changes among membracine treehoppers. This information will then be used to identify the origins of subsocial behavior and to trace the development of subsocial behavior over evolutionary time. The result of this study will contribute not only to our understanding of subsocial behavior in this fascinating group of insects but to knowledge of evolution of sociality in general.