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

动物行为研究越来越多地集中在社会生活中出现的集体行为。重要的工作正在进行中，以了解这种明显的组织是如何在没有任何有意识的监督或领导者的指导下实现的;然而，研究人员对这些行为的理解是不完整的，如果不了解自然选择如何对群体及其个体成分起作用。本研究的目的是探讨群体内冲突对北美原颌蚁集体决策的影响。通过对合作与冲突的耦合分析，该项目有助于我们理解社会昆虫如何实现超有机体状态，这可以更普遍地应用于生物组织中的其他主要转变（例如基因到染色体，单细胞到多细胞生物）。该项目还将建立奴隶制蚂蚁作为集体决策的模型，并贡献一种新的机制，不同于相对较好地研究的岩蚁和蜜蜂寻找新巢的集体决策行为。在这个项目的过程中，4-5名本科生将得到指导，研究人员将继续他们的推广和科学教育活动，使用便携式，橡子筑巢蚁群。最终了解什么原则使集体行为有效也可能有助于指导人类群体在我们日益网络化的世界中的结构。本项目将通过研究美洲原住民对在哪里发动奴隶袭击的集体决策来研究群体内冲突与群体行为效率之间的关系。研究人员将联合收割机结合实验室的观察实验和自然主义的实地实验，以实现三个主要目标：（1）测试集体决策对群体内冲突的弹性;（2）描述高冲突群体和低冲突群体之间的个人行为差异;（3）测试集体行为的新兴利益是否影响合作的演变。在这个实验中，研究人员将通过诱导一半排名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。然后将奴隶制造者菌落引入含有低、中和高质量的三个宿主菌落的玻璃竞技场。将使用视频跟踪软件分析积极搜索的侦察兵的最大数量、首次发现巢穴之前和突袭开始之前搜索的总时间、找到并招募的巢穴数量、招募持续时间、突袭的巢穴质量、突袭队的规模和被盗的育雏物品数量。最后，将P. americanus菌落移入人工巢并置于研究地块中。一年后，奴隶的数量和男性和女性的数量将被计算，卵巢发育将在工人中进行测量。将利用eCommons（http：//ecommons.library.cornell.edu/）和生物复杂性知识网（http：knb.ecoinformatics.org）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.