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在动物社会中有时存在密切的合作，而有时存在激烈的冲突。这个项目将帮助我们了解合作与冲突之间的平衡转变，通过调查一种叫做Dolichovespula arenaria的常见黄马甲黄蜂的巢穴中从强烈的合作到惊人的冲突的惊人转变。这些黄蜂的巢是我们熟悉的灰色的纸结构，大约有足球大小，出现在树上和建筑物上。每个蜂巢里都住着一个黄蜂家族，包括一只黄蜂妈妈（蜂后）和她的几十个女儿和儿子。大多数时候，雌蜂会与母蜂合作，帮助母蜂建造巢穴、保卫巢穴、收集食物、抚养蜂后的后代。但在夏末，其中一只幼蜂会突然刺死母蜂，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。使用新颖的视频记录方法，使我们能够仔细监控每个蜂群内的情况，当母蜂被杀时，PI将测试几个假设，看看它是如何真正有利于一个女儿黄蜂杀死她的母亲的。一种可能性是，黄蜂母亲失去了生育能力，在这种情况下，工蜂几乎没有什么损失，通过杀死母亲并接管巢穴，工蜂会得到很多好处。这项工作将加深我们对影响合作与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.