Collaborative Research: Collective intelligence and social brain evolution in ants

由于其异常的复杂性，对非人类动物的研究对于有效地探索人类大脑的设计是必要的。理解人类大脑起源的一个中心问题是社会生活的作用以及社会生活对大脑产生适应性行为的要求。随着人类进化出复杂的社会，人们认为大脑体积的增加是为了实现高级认知。社会性昆虫是根据社会复杂性来研究大脑进化的杰出模型。本研究项目采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，因为不同物种形成的群体在大小和复杂程度上都有所不同。这项研究还将帮助我们理解异常小的大脑如何能够处理复杂的社会信息。该项目将分析工人大脑的大小和组织的差异，以及它们的代谢成本，以确定复杂的社会生活是否提高了大脑中能量使用的效率。该项目将培养研究生和本科生，使他们能够熟练地设计科学研究，并获得使大脑成像的技术。学生还将学习数据分析、科学写作和出版。研究人员将开发一个课程，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学校招募不同的参与者，以鼓励少数民族学生参与科学活动。该项目将广泛支持芝加哥STEM管道、亚利桑那保证、大脑意识和波士顿向上发展项目的科学推广，以解决国家对改善科学教育和培养下一代科学家的关键需求。为了确定社会复杂性是如何影响大脑进化的，研究人员将量化神经元代谢需求、神经投资和缩放、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。对主要蚂蚁亚科的代表物种，强调社会复杂性的可变性将形成样本群体。研究人员将：1)利用细胞色素氧化酶染色来评估ATP的使用，量化功能特化神经pil的能量需求；2)确定大脑发育是否依赖于经验；3)量化与认知相关的突触复合体；4)将行为表现与神经和代谢指标相结合。研究人员将确定神经元的数量、大小和周围感觉结构的变化，并检查脑室的缩放模式。控制系统发育，分析推断出与集体智慧相关的独立进化事件如何影响大脑进化。在没有版权问题的情况下，所有原始图像将在出版后免费提供。有机体数据（标本和菌落收集数据、表型数据等）将保存在各个实验室，并应要求免费提供。代金券标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.