The Socioecology of Parental Investment Strategies in Ants.

蚂蚁父母投资策略的社会生态学。

• 批准号: 0642085
• 负责人: Peter Nonacs
• 金额: $ 29.81万
• 依托单位: University of California-Los Angeles
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-05-01 至 2011-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0642085&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Socioecology; Parental; Investment; Strategies; Ants.

A fundamental decision for parents is how much to invest in offspring. Potentially this involves a tradeoff where more investment in each one reduces the total number of young.. The current dogma for parental care assumes this tradeoff is always present because food is always limiting. If true, parents should strive for a single "optimal" size young and should invest the same amount into every offspring. Further, if food availability changes, parents should change numbers of offspring rather than their size. If parents are not always food limited, however, then parents can match investment to the immediate environment (resulting in offspring of varying size and quality). Although these are very different ways of rearing young, they are not easy to differentiate. Tests require species where: (1) Consequences of offspring size are measurable; and (2) Many young are produced at one time so that offspring size distributions can be quantified and compared. Ants are ideal for testing parental investment strategies. Offspring size strongly affects founding success of new colonies, and mature colonies produce hundreds of young at a time. The goals of our research are to: (1) Quantify the costs and benefits of offspring size in harvester ants, and (2) Experimentally manipulate food for their colonies in the field. Together, the experiments test how ecology affects parental behavior. If parental strategies do track the environment, a major paradigm shift in understanding parent-offspring conflict, offspring sex ratios, and reproduction in social groups will follow. This project will train one graduate student and several undergraduates in field biology, data collection and experimental design. Students from historically underrepresented groups will be recruited through programs (CARE and MARC) supported by UCLA, NSF and NIH. One high school teacher, Ms. Rosa Chan, will be included in all aspects of the project through the Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program. She will be trained to develop inquiry-based lessons for classroom use (which will also be made available online through UCLA's GK-12 program).

父母的一个基本决定是在后代身上投资多少。这可能涉及到一个权衡，即对每一个项目的更多投资会减少年轻人的总数。目前父母照顾孩子的教条假设这种权衡总是存在的，因为食物总是有限的。如果这是真的，父母应该努力为一个单一的“最佳”大小的年轻人，并应投资相同的金额给每一个后代。此外，如果食物供应发生变化，父母应该改变后代的数量，而不是他们的大小。然而，如果父母并不总是食物有限，那么父母可以将投资与直接环境相匹配（导致不同大小和质量的后代）。虽然这是非常不同的养育方式，但它们并不容易区分。 试验需要以下种属：（1）后代大小的后果是可测量的;（2）许多年轻人在同一时间产生，以便后代大小分布可以量化和比较。 蚂蚁是测试父母投资策略的理想选择。后代的大小强烈影响新殖民地的建立成功，成熟的殖民地一次产生数百只幼崽。我们的研究目标是：（1）量化收获蚁后代大小的成本和收益，（2）实验性地为它们在野外的殖民地操纵食物。 这些实验共同测试了生态学如何影响父母的行为。如果父母的策略确实能追踪环境，那么在理解亲子冲突、后代性别比例和社会群体中的生殖方面就会发生重大的范式转变。本项目将培养一名研究生和几名本科生野外生物学、数据收集和实验设计。 来自历史上代表性不足的群体的学生将通过UCLA，NSF和NIH支持的计划（CARE和MARC）招募。 Rosa Chan女士将通过教师研究经验（RET）计划参与该项目的各个方面。她将接受培训，以开发基于探究的课程，供课堂使用（这也将通过加州大学洛杉矶分校的GK-12计划在线提供）。