DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Matricide in eusocial wasps: adaptive hypotheses and informational constraints

行为生物学家的目标之一是理解为什么有时动物社会中存在密切的合作，而有时又存在激烈的冲突。 这个项目将帮助我们了解合作与冲突之间的平衡转移，通过调查一种常见的黄夹克黄蜂（Dolichovespula arenaria）的巢穴内从强烈合作到惊人冲突的惊人转变。 这些黄蜂的巢穴是常见的灰色纸结构，大约足球大小，出现在树上和建筑物上。 在每一个里面都住着一个黄蜂家族，包括一只黄蜂妈妈（女王）和几十个她的女儿和儿子。 大多数时候，子蜂与母蜂合作，帮助母蜂筑巢、保卫、收集食物，并帮助抚养蜂王的后代。 但在夏末，其中一只雌蜂会突然蜇死雌蜂，然后自己开始产卵。 这种从合作到冲突的戏剧性转变是如何演变的，这是本研究要解决的难题。 使用新的视频记录方法，使我们能够仔细监测每个殖民地内的情况时，杀母蜂，PI将测试几个假设，它如何实际上可以有利于一个女儿黄蜂杀死她的母亲。 一种可能性是母蜂失去了生育能力，在这种情况下，工蜂杀死母亲并接管蜂巢，损失不大，但收获很大。 这项工作将加深我们对影响合作和冲突的生物力量的理解，这是一个与人类社会密切相关的问题。

One of the goals of behavioral biologists is to understand why sometimes there is close cooperation among in animal societies and why at other times there is intense conflict. This project will help us understand the shifting balance between cooperation and conflict by investigating a striking switch from strong cooperation to stunning conflict inside the nests of a common species of yellow jacket wasp called Dolichovespula arenaria. The nests of these wasps are the familiar grey, paper structures about the size of a soccer ball that appear in trees and on buildings. Inside each one lives a family of wasps that includes a mother wasp (the queen) and dozens of her daughters and sons. Most of the time, the daughter wasps cooperate with their mother, helping her by building the nest, defending it, collecting food, and helping rear the queen's offspring. But late in the summer, one of the daughter wasps will suddenly sting and kill the mother wasp and then start laying eggs herself. How such a dramatic switch from cooperation to conflict can have evolved is the puzzle that this study addresses. Using novel video recording methods that enable us to carefully monitor the situation inside each colony at the time of the matricide, the PI will test several hypotheses for how it can actually benefit a daughter wasp to kill her mother. One possibility is that the mother wasp has lost her fertility, in which case the workers have little to lose and much to gain by killing their mother and taking over the nest. This work will be deepen our understanding of the biological forces that influence cooperation and conflict, and this is a matter of great relevance to human society.