DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Benefits of Cooperative Food Search in the Maintenance of Family Living in Ocellated Antbirds

该项目的主要目标是对生物学中的一个基本问题作出贡献：脊椎动物的社会和合作行为是如何通过自然选择维持的。这项研究将试图确定群体生活的好处是通过帮助近亲生存和繁殖间接获得的，还是直接从个体之间的相互作用中获得的，而不考虑亲属关系。这些假设将在哥斯达黎加La Selva生物站的cellated蚁鸟上进行测试。星形蚁群是群居的，它们只吃白天行军的游牧军蚁群冲出来的节肢动物。蚂蚁很难监控，因为它们经常在夜间活动，所以对鸟类来说找到它们是一个问题。初步数据表明，这些鸟类跟随邻居寻找群体（合作寻找食物）。数据还显示，觅食的鸟类对某些个体具有攻击性，而对其他个体则没有。在蜂群中，邻居之间的相互容忍将提供获得食物的途径。合作寻找食物将通过在夜间移除蚁群和跟踪无线电标记的鸟类，直到它们找到新的蚁群来进行测试。分子标记被用来调查邻居是否是近亲。通过记录发声来模拟与焦点觅食鸟类有不同程度亲缘关系的邻居和陌生人的存在，以评估这些鸟类是否能够识别亲属或邻居并据此分配容忍度。该研究的智力优势在于通过评估自然条件下的一种新的合作机制来评估群体生活和社会性的好处。此外，本研究将提高目前对义务性军蚁跟随鸟类行为的认识。这一信息很重要，因为在它们栖息的热带森林中，它们是对森林破碎化最敏感的鸟类。考虑到它们的社会行为，未来的保护策略可以得到改善。这个项目以教育的形式对社会产生了广泛的影响。该项目已经并将继续为获得科学研究机会有限的学生提供教育和培训。该项目的调查人员已经并将继续为无法来到La Selva的本科生、儿童、青少年和保护区内及周围的当地自然主义者导游提供教育讲座。后者对生物学家在他们工作的同一地区提供的新信息受益匪浅，他们将这些信息传递给当地社区和生态旅游者。

The main goal of this project is to contribute to a fundamental question in biology: how social and cooperative behaviors are maintained by natural selection in vertebrates. The research will attempt to determine if benefits of group living are indirectly obtained by helping close relatives to survive and reproduce or if benefits are directly obtained from mutual interactions between individuals, regardless of kinship. Those hypotheses will be tested in the Ocellated Antbird at La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica. Ocellated Antbirds are social and feed exclusively on arthropods flushed by marching swarms of nomadic army ants during the day. The ants are difficult to monitor because they often move at night, so that finding them is a problem for the birds. Preliminary data suggest that these birds follow neighbors to find swarms (cooperative food searching). The data also show that foraging birds are aggressive towards some individuals but not others. Mutual tolerance of neighbors at swarms would provide access to food. Cooperative food searching will be tested by removing army ant colonies at night and tracking radio-tagged birds until they find new colonies. Molecular markers are being used to investigate whether neighbors are close relatives. Simulated presence of neighbors and strangers with different degrees of relatedness to focal foraging birds will be accomplished with recorded vocalizations to evaluate whether these birds are able to identify relatives or neighbors and allocate tolerance accordingly. The intellectual merits of the proposed research are the assessment of benefits of group living and sociality through the evaluation of a novel mechanism of cooperation under natural conditions. In addition, this study will improve current knowledge on the behavior of obligate army-ant-following birds. This information is important because these are the most sensitive birds to forest fragmentation in the tropical forests that they inhabit. Future conservation strategies could be improved by taking their social behavior into account. This project has broad impacts to society in the form of education. The project has and will continue to provide education and training to students with limited access to research opportunities in science. The investigators of this project have and will continue to offer educational talks to undergraduates that cannot come to La Selva, and to children, teenagers, and local naturalist guides in and around the protected areas. The latter group greatly benefits and appreciates new information coming from biologists working in the same areas where they work, and they pass this information along to the local communities and to ecotourists.