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

动物行为学的研究越来越集中于社会生活中产生的集体行为。目前正在进行重要的工作，以了解如何在没有任何领导人有意识的监督或指导的情况下实现这种表面上的组织；然而，如果不了解自然选择是如何作用于群体和个体的，研究人员对这些行为的理解是不完整的。本项目的目的是调查群体内冲突对北美制奴蚁原蚁的集体决策的影响。通过对合作和冲突的耦合分析，该项目有助于我们理解社会性昆虫如何获得超级有机体的地位，这可以更广泛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）。该项目还将建立造奴蚁作为集体决策的模型，并提供一种不同于研究相对较好的岩蚁和蜜蜂寻找新巢的集体决策行为的新机制。在这个项目的过程中，4-5名本科生将被指导，调查人员将继续他们的推广和科学教育活动，使用便携式的橡子筑巢蚁群。最终理解使集体行为有效的原则，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。这个项目将通过研究美洲种在哪里发动奴隶袭击的集体决策，来调查群体内部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观察实验和自然的现场实验，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的个体行为差异；(3)检验集体行为的突现利益是否影响合作的演化。在这个实验中，研究人员将通过诱导一半最低级别的奴隶工人的卵巢发育来操纵奴隶群体的自私程度。然后将一个奴隶殖民地引入一个玻璃竞技场，其中包含三个低，中，高质量的宿主殖民地。使用视频跟踪软件分析主动搜索的最大数量、发现第一个巢穴前和突袭开始前的总搜索时间、找到和招募的巢穴数量、招募的持续时间、被搜查巢穴的质量、突袭队的规模和被偷走的育雏物品数量。最后，美洲大蠊群落将被移入人工巢穴并放置在研究地块上。一年后，将计算奴隶的数量和雌雄蛹的数量，并测量工人卵巢的发育情况。eCommons （http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/）和生物复杂性知识网络（http://knb.ecoinformatics.org）都将用于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.