DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Colony-level Selection and the Role of Reproductive Conflict on Collective Decision-making in a Slave-making Ant

动物行为学研究日益集中于社会生活中出现的集体行为。目前正在进行大量工作，以了解在没有任何领导人有意识的监督或指导的情况下，这种明显的组织是如何实现的；然而，如果不理解自然选择如何对群体及其个体成员进行操作，研究人员对这些行为的理解是不完整的。该项目的目的是调查群体内部冲突对北美奴隶制蚂蚁Protomogna us americanus集体决策的影响。通过合作和冲突的耦合分析，这个项目有助于我们理解群居昆虫如何获得超有机体地位，这一地位可以更普遍地应用于生物组织的其他主要转变(例如，基因到染色体，单细胞到多细胞生物体)。该项目还将建立奴隶蚂蚁作为集体决策的模型，并贡献一种新的机制，有别于相对研究得较好的岩蚁和蜜蜂寻找新巢穴的集体决策行为。在这个项目的过程中，将指导4-5名本科生，调查人员将继续他们的外展和科学教育活动，使用便携式的橡子巢穴蚂蚁群。最终，了解是什么原则使集体行为有效，也可能有助于在我们日益网络化的世界中指导人类群体的结构。本项目将通过研究美洲原住民关于在哪里发动奴隶袭击的集体决定，来研究群体内冲突与群体层面行为效率之间的关系。研究人员将结合实验室中的观察性实验和自然主义的实地实验来实现三个主要目标：(1)测试集体决策对群体内冲突的弹性；(2)描述高冲突组和低冲突组之间的个人行为差异；以及(3)测试集体行为的新兴利益是否影响合作的演变。在这项实验中，研究人员将通过诱导一半级别最低的奴隶制造者的卵巢发育来操纵奴隶制造者群体的自私程度。然后，一个奴隶制造者菌落将被引入一个玻璃竞技场，其中包含三个质量分别为低、中和高的宿主菌落。视频跟踪软件将分析活跃搜索的最大童子军数量、在首次发现巢穴之前和突袭开始之前花费的总搜索时间、找到和招募的巢穴数量、招募持续时间、突袭巢穴的质量、突袭队伍的规模和被盗幼鸟物品的数量。最后，美洲对虾群体将被移入人工巢中，并放置在研究地块中。一年后，将统计奴隶的数量以及雄性和雌性性蛹的数量，并测量工人的卵巢发育。ECommons(http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/)，)和生物复杂性知识网络(http://knb.ecoinformatics.org))都将被用来向广大受众提供数据。

Animal behavior research is increasingly concentrated on the collective behaviors that emerge from social living. Significant work is underway to understand how such apparent organization is achieved without any conscious oversight or direction from a leader; however, researchers understanding of these behaviors are incomplete without an understanding of how natural selection operates on both the group and its individual constituents. The goal of this project is to investigate the influence of within-group conflict on collective decision-making in the North American slave-making ant Protomognathus americanus. Through coupled analysis of cooperation and conflict, this project contributes to our understanding of how social insects achieve superorganism status, which can more generally be applied to the other major transitions in biological organization (e.g. genes to chromosomes, unicellular to multicellular organisms). This project will also establish slave-making ants as models of collective decision-making and contribute a novel mechanism distinct from the relatively well studied collective decision-making behaviors by rock ants and honeybees searching for new nests. Over the course of this project, 4-5 undergraduates will be mentored and the investigators will continue their outreach and science education activities using portable, acorn-nesting ant colonies. Ultimately understanding what principles make collective behavior effective may also help guide the structure of human groups in our increasingly networked world.This project will investigate the relationship between within-group conflict and the efficiency of group-level behaviors by studying P. americanus' collective decision over where to launch slave-raids. The researchers will combine observational experiments in the lab and naturalistic field experiments to achieve three main goals: (1) test how resilient collective decision-making is to within-group conflict; (2) describe how individual behaviors differ between high and low conflict groups; and (3) test if the emergent benefits from collective behaviors influence the evolution of cooperation. In this experiment, the researchers will manipulate the degree of selfishness in slave-maker colonies by inducing ovarian development in half of the lowest ranking slave-maker workers. A slavemaker colony will then be introduced to a glass arena containing three host colonies of low, medium and high quality. The maximum number of scouts actively searching, total time spent searching before first nest discovery and before raid initiation, number of nests located and recruited to, duration of recruitment, quality of the nest raided, size of the raiding party and number of brood items stolen will be analyzed using video tracking software. Lastly, P. americanus colonies will be moved into artificial nests and placed in a study plot. After a year, the number of slaves and the number of male and sexual female pupae will be counted and ovarian development will be measured in the workers. Both eCommons (http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/), and the Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (http://knb.ecoinformatics.org) will be used to make data accessible to a wide audience.