DISSERTATION RESEARCH: The Maintenance of Cooperative Nest Construction in Sociable Weavers (Philetairus Socius)

论文研究：群居织工（Philetairus Socius）合作筑巢的维护

• 批准号: 1210500
• 负责人: William Searcy
• 金额: $ 1.49万
• 依托单位: University of Miami
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-07-15 至 2014-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1210500&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DISSERTATION; RESEARCH; Maintenance; Cooperative; Nest

Although evolution by natural selection has often been depicted as favoring ruthless, selfish behavior, cooperation is actually widespread in nature. Consequently, the evolution of cooperative behavior has become a central problem in biology. The present research examines the evolution of a particular form of cooperation, cooperative nest building in an African bird. Communal nests represent a public goods dilemma: each individual benefits directly from the communal nest, but would benefit more if it could refrain from contributing to nest-building as long as others continued to maintain the nest. Such public goods dilemmas are common in human societies but have rarely been explored in non-human animals. This research will investigate cooperative nest construction behavior of a Namibian bird, the sociable weaver. Observations of nest construction in nature will examine relative contributions of the sexes and of individuals to test whether cooperation in this instance can be explained via kin selection. Simply, kin selection is a type of natural selection favoring aid to genetic relatives. An agent-based model will be used to further explore the possibility that cooperative nest building can be sustained through kin selection. The computer code used to implement the model will be made available to other scientists, thus facilitating future modeling efforts in social evolution.In addition, an experiment will test whether individuals that forego cooperative nest construction are punished by others; such punishment is a common explanation for contribution to public goods in human societies. Thus the research will test whether theories explaining contribution to public goods in human societies explain cooperation in this model system. The project will also contribute to the development of the next generation of scientists and engineers. The project includes undergraduate mentoring and training in genetic analyses and behavioral observation, thus providing useful research experience for the next generation of American scientists.

尽管自然选择的进化经常被描述为偏爱无情，自私的行为，但合作实际上在本质上是普遍的。因此，合作行为的演变已成为生物学中的核心问题。本研究研究了非洲鸟类中特定形式的合作，合作巢建筑的演变。公共巢代表了公共物品的困境：每个人都会直接从公共巢中受益，但是如果可以避免贡献巢穴建设，那么只要其他人继续维持巢穴。这种公共物品困境在人类社会中很常见，但在非人类动物中很少探索。这项研究将研究纳米比亚鸟（社交织布工）的合作巢建造行为。对自然界中巢结构的观察将检查性别和个体的相对贡献，以测试在这种情况下是否可以通过亲属选择来解释合作。简而言之，亲属选择是一种自然选择，有利于遗传亲戚的辅助。 基于代理的模型将用于进一步探索通过选择亲属可以维持合作巢建筑的可能性。 用于实施该模型的计算机代码将提供给其他科学家，从而促进了社会进化中未来的建模工作。此外，一个实验将测试是否会被其他人惩罚的个人是否受到其他人的惩罚；这种惩罚是对人类社会公共物品的贡献的普遍解释。因此，研究将测试解释人类社会中公共物品的贡献的理论是否解释了该模型系统中的合作。该项目还将为下一代科学家和工程师的发展做出贡献。 该项目包括遗传分析和行为观察中的本科指导和培训，从而为下一代美国科学家提供了有用的研究经验。