Division of labor in a clonal ant

克隆蚂蚁的劳动分工

• 批准号: 211890972
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Jürgen Heinze
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Arbeitsgruppe Evolution, Verhalten und Genetik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2010-12-31 至 2014-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/211890972?language=en
• 关键词: Division; labor; clonal; ant

Division of labor underlies the success of most evolutionary transitions from simple to more complex entities. While the mechanisms leading to cell differentiation in multi-cellular organisms are quite well understood, research on division of labor in insect societies has only slowly moved beyond a merely descriptive stage. In this project, we aim at determining proximate mechanisms that bring about (reproductive) division of labor in a very simple model system, the clonal ant Platythyrea punctata, in which all individuals are genetically and morphologically identical. We intend to determine, which social and environmental conditions during larval development or shortly after eclosion affect the propensity of an individual to start reproducing or to take over non-reproductive tasks. We will focus explicitly on factors that are believed to play a role in species with morphological castes, such as nutrition and worker / larvae ratio, and on social interactions shortly after adult emergence. Results from these behavioral studies and experimental manipulations shall be complemented by comparisons of gene expression among individuals, which, because of their previous history, likely become reproductives or non-reproductives. We expect that through our investigations we will significantly contribute to our understanding of the fundamental principles that underlie division of labor in socialinsects.

分工是大多数进化成功的基础，从简单的实体到更复杂的实体。虽然多细胞生物体中导致细胞分化的机制已经相当清楚，但对昆虫社会中的劳动分工的研究只是缓慢地超越了仅仅是描述性的阶段。在这个项目中，我们的目标是在一个非常简单的模型系统中确定导致(生殖)分工的最近的机制，在这个系统中，所有的个体在遗传和形态上都是相同的。我们打算确定，在幼虫发育期间或羽化后不久，哪些社会和环境条件会影响个体开始繁殖或接管非生殖任务的倾向。我们将明确关注被认为对具有形态种姓的物种起作用的因素，如营养和工幼虫比例，以及成虫羽化后不久的社会互动。这些行为研究和实验操作的结果将通过比较个体之间的基因表达来补充，由于他们以前的历史，这些基因表达很可能成为生殖体或非生殖体。我们希望，通过我们的调查，我们将大大有助于我们对社会性昆虫劳动分工的基本原则的理解。