When and how can Group Composition be locally adapted? A test with Social Spiders.

何时以及如何根据本地情况调整小组组成？

• 批准号: 1352705
• 负责人: Jonathan Pruitt
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: University of Pittsburgh
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-02-01 至 2015-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1352705&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: When; how; Group; Composition; locally

Whether or how societies are able to sense poor-performing group compositions and respond to them adaptively across different environments remains unknown. Group composition, or the relative representation of individuals with different traits, is often thought to be a major determinant of social group organization and success. Some groups naturally exhibit compositions which help them flourish and others express mixtures that yield their demise. A tractable society (social spiders) will be used to assess how variation in group composition influences the growth, reproductive rate, and extinction risk of entire societies. Societies of different mixtures will be generated and deployed at different field sites, and the success of these societies will be tracked over time. Additionally, the shifts in societies' composition will be monitored over time, in order to see whether societies are able to sense their ailing compositions and shift them adaptively. The proposed work will further our understanding of how societies, as collective entities, evolve and adjust adaptively to current challenges. This has implications in fields ranging from medicine, to agriculture, and conservation. Virtually every aspect of biology is interested in understanding the drivers of extinction: farmers want to eradicate pests and preserve cultivars; epidemiologists want to drive world pathogens to extinction; while conservation biologists hope to eradicate invasive pest species while preserving dwindling natives. Understanding how groups of organisms (like social spiders) sense and respond to pending extinction risk under normal circumstances might help us predict the factors that can accelerate, slow, or circumvent extinction in other taxa where rigorous experiments are not generally possible. Finally, numerous undergraduates and K-12 students will be involved with elements of the project's implementation as well as the dissemination of the findings. Each year more than a dozen high school teachers help to collect, analyze, and disseminate the findings of these studies, and undergraduates from the University of Pittsburgh gain on-site training on field ecologists and the scientific method.

社会是否能够感知表现不佳的群体组成，并在不同的环境中做出适应性的反应，以及如何做到这一点，仍然是未知的。群体构成，或具有不同特征的个体的相对代表，通常被认为是社会群体组织和成功的主要决定因素。一些群体自然地表现出有助于他们繁荣的成分，而另一些群体则表现出导致他们灭亡的混合物。一个易驯服的社会（社会性蜘蛛）将被用来评估群体组成的变化如何影响整个社会的生长、繁殖率和灭绝风险。不同混合的社团将在不同的现场产生和部署，这些社团的成功将随着时间的推移而被跟踪。此外，随着时间的推移，社会构成的变化将被监测，以观察社会是否能够感知到它们的病态构成并适应地改变它们。拟议的工作将进一步加深我们对社会作为集体实体如何发展和适应当前挑战的理解。这对医学、农业和自然保护等领域都有影响。实际上，生物学的各个方面都对了解物种灭绝的驱动因素感兴趣：农民希望消灭害虫并保存品种；流行病学家想要消灭世界上的病原体；自然保护生物学家希望在保护日益减少的本地物种的同时消灭入侵的有害物种。了解生物群体（如群居蜘蛛）在正常情况下如何感知和应对即将到来的灭绝风险，可能有助于我们预测加速、减缓或避免其他分类群灭绝的因素，这些分类群通常不可能进行严格的实验。最后，许多本科生和K-12学生将参与项目实施的要素以及研究结果的传播。每年都有十几名高中教师帮助收集、分析和传播这些研究的结果，匹兹堡大学的本科生获得实地生态学家和科学方法的现场培训。