Collaborative Research: Collective intelligence and social brain evolution in ants

由于其非凡的复杂性，对非人类动物的研究将是有效探索人脑设计的必要之举。理解人脑起源的一个中心问题涉及社会生活的作用及其对大脑产生适应性行为的要求。随着人类进化成复杂的社会，人们认为大脑的体积增加了，从而使高级认知成为可能。群居昆虫是从群居复杂性的角度研究大脑进化的杰出模型。这项研究项目使用蚂蚁作为一个理想的模型系统来分析社会性和大脑进化之间的关系，因为不同的物种形成了大小和复杂程度不同的群体。这项研究还将帮助我们理解异常微小的大脑如何能够处理复杂的社会信息。该项目将分析员工大脑的大小和组织结构以及他们的新陈代谢成本的差异，以确定复杂的社交生活是否提高了大脑的能量利用效率。该项目将培养研究生和本科生，他们将熟练地设计科学研究，并获得能够对大脑进行成像的技术。学生还将学习数据分析、科学写作和出版。研究人员将开发一门课程，通过向K-12学生介绍行为和神经科学的研究来丰富他们的教育。研究人员将从芝加哥大学的实验室学院招募不同的参与者，以鼓励少数族裔学生参与科学活动。该项目将广泛支持芝加哥STEM管道、亚利桑那州保证、大脑意识和波士顿向上绑定计划中的科学推广，以满足改善科学教育和培养下一代科学家的关键国家需求。为了确定社会复杂性如何影响大脑进化，研究人员将量化神经元代谢需求、神经细胞投资和扩展、行为可塑性和大脑区域的突触组织，这些区域被认为是认知功能的关键。代表主要蚂蚁亚科的物种对将形成样本组，这些物种突出了社会复杂性的变异性。研究人员将：1)使用细胞色素氧化酶染色来评估ATP的使用，以量化功能专门化神经球的能量需求；2)确定大脑发育是否依赖经验；3)量化与认知相关的突触复合体；以及4)将行为表现与神经和代谢指标结合起来。研究人员将确定神经元的数量、大小和外周感觉结构的变化，并检查脑室的比例模式。控制系统发展，分析推断与集体智力相关的独立进化事件如何塑造大脑进化。在没有版权问题的情况下，所有原始图像在发布后都将免费提供。生物数据(标本和菌落收集数据、表型数据等)将在单独的实验室中维护，并将根据要求免费提供。凭证样本将存放在菲尔德博物馆的蚂蚁收藏中。

Due to its extraordinary complexity, research on non-human animals will be necessary to efficiently explore the design of the human brain. A central problem in understanding the origin of the human brain concerns the role of social life and the demands it places on the brain to generate adaptive behavior. As humans evolved complex societies, it is thought that the brain increased in volume to enable advanced cognition. Social insects are outstanding models to examine brain evolution in light of social complexity. This research project employs ants as an ideal model system to analyze the relationship between sociality and brain evolution because different species form colonies that vary in size and the degree of complexity. This research will also help us understand how exceptionally small brains are able to process complex social information. The project will analyze differences in the size and organization of worker brains, and their metabolic costs to determine if complex social life has increased the efficiency of energy use in the brain. The project will train graduate and undergraduate who will become skilled in designing scientific studies and will acquire techniques that enable brains to be imaged. Students will also learn data analysis, and scientific writing and publication. The researchers will develop a curriculum to enrich the education of K-12 students by introducing them to the study of behavior and neuroscience. The researchers will recruit diverse participants from the Laboratory Schools of the University of Chicago to encourage minority students to become activity engaged in science. The project will broadly support science outreach in the Chicago STEM Pipeline, Arizona Assurance, Brain Awareness, and Boston Upward Bound programs to address the critical national need to improve science education and train the next generation of scientists.To determine how social complexity has influenced brain evolution, the researchers will quantify neuronal metabolic requirements, neuropil investment and scaling, behavioral plasticity, and synaptic organization in brain regions considered key to cognitive function. Pairs of species representative of major ant subfamilies that accentuate variability in social complexity will form the sample groups. The researchers will: 1) quantify energetic requirements of functionally specialized neuropil using cytochrome oxidase staining to assess ATP use; 2) determine if brain development is experience-dependent; 3) quantify synaptic complexes associated with cognition; and 4) couple behavioral performance with neural and metabolic metrics. The researchers will determine neuron number and size and variation in peripheral sensory structures, and examine brain compartment scaling patterns. Controlling for phylogeny, analyses infer how independent evolutionary events associated with collective intelligence shaped brain evolution. All original images will be freely available upon publication, in the absence of copyright issues. Organismal data (specimen and colony collection data, phenotypic data, etc.) will be maintained in individual labs, and will be made freely available upon request. Voucher specimens will be deposited in the ant collection of the Field Museum.