Group Size, Scaling of Work, and Metabolism in Ant Colonies

蚁群的群体规模、工作规模和新陈代谢

• 批准号: 1558127
• 负责人: Jennifer Fewell
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: Arizona State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-15 至 2021-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1558127&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Group; Size; Scaling; Work; Metabolism

The pattern of lower energy use per gram with increasing size (known as metabolic scaling) occurs across all animal groups, yet the mechanisms behind it are still not understood. Intriguingly, social insect colonies show the same level of reduced metabolism with increasing colony size. This project will combine experiments and mathematical models to determine the relationships between energy use and the organization of work in ant colonies. Ant colonies serve as an exemplar for this question, because their highly coordinated societies are organized around the work needed to sustain colony growth and maintenance, analogous to metabolic processes in organisms. Understanding the mechanisms underlying metabolic scaling has potential applications in physiology, medicine, and agriculture. The energy-based models and experiments in this project will be relevant well beyond social insect colonies, including informing human population scaling issues. The project will connect this research with a Mathematics and Social Biology Co-mentoring Program, to train research teams of undergraduates together in biology and mathematics. Students will participate in a formal training program on social biological principles and simulation modeling, and then participate as cross-disciplinary teams in collaborative research. Existing connections with research and minority programs at ASU will be used to recruit under-represented students into the program. Teaching modules on group size, social behavior, and metabolism for online K-12 use will also be developed in collaboration with ASU's Ask-a-Biologist outreach program. This project is co-funded by the Animal Behavior program in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems, the Mathematical Biology program in the Division of Mathematical Sciences, and the BIOMAPS program for proposals at the interface of Biology, Math and the Physical Sciences.Group size is one of the most fundamental attributes of sociality, with important effects on social organization and fitness. Previous work has found that larger harvester ant colonies (Pogonomyrmex californicus) exhibit allometric changes in task performance and activity patterns, including increased worker specialization. They additionally shift the allocation of effort, possibly away from more expensive tasks. Potentially coupled with this, colonies also show a consistent pattern of hypometric metabolic scaling, which matches that of organismal scaling patterns. Because task performance is directly linked to colony growth and metabolism, these results lead to the hypothesis that larger colonies achieve economies of scale in energy use from scaling changes in the organization of work. To examine how colony size influences work organization, the distribution of workers across tasks, individual task specialization, and worker activity levels will be measured in laboratory colonies of varying size. Colony metabolism, brood production and growth rates will be measured simultaneously to link behavioral organization to colony metabolic consequences. Additionally, colony demographics, including worker size and age distributions, will be assessed for their contributions to variation in metabolism. These parameters will be measured for: (a) colonies that vary in size but not age; (b) colonies changing in size ontogenetically over time; (c) size-manipulated colonies. The empirical research will be combined with simulation, differential equation and optimization models to ask how components of task organization and activity might interact to generate scaling changes in colony metabolism and productivity.

每克能量消耗随体型增加而降低的模式（称为代谢缩放）发生在所有动物群体中，但其背后的机制仍不清楚。有趣的是，随着群体规模的增加，群居昆虫群体的新陈代谢水平也会降低。这个项目将结合联合收割机实验和数学模型来确定蚁群中能量使用和工作组织之间的关系。蚁群可以作为这个问题的一个范例，因为它们高度协调的社会是围绕着维持群体生长和维持所需的工作组织起来的，类似于生物体中的代谢过程。了解代谢缩放的潜在机制在生理学、医学和农业中具有潜在的应用。该项目中基于能量的模型和实验将远远超出社会昆虫群体的相关性，包括告知人口规模问题。该项目将把这项研究与数学和社会生物学共同指导计划联系起来，以培养生物学和数学方面的本科生研究团队。学生将参加关于社会生物学原理和模拟建模的正式培训课程，然后作为跨学科团队参与合作研究。与亚利桑那州立大学的研究和少数民族项目的现有联系将用于招募代表性不足的学生进入该计划。关于团体规模，社会行为和新陈代谢的在线K-12使用的教学模块也将与ASU的Ask-a-Biologist外展计划合作开发。该项目由综合有机系统部的动物行为项目、数学科学部的数学生物学项目和生物学、数学和物理科学接口的BIOMAPS项目共同资助。群体规模是社会性最基本的属性之一，对社会组织和健康有重要影响。以前的工作已经发现，较大的收获蚁群（Pogonomyrmex californicus）表现出异速生长的任务性能和活动模式的变化，包括增加工人专业化。它们还改变了工作的分配，可能会远离更昂贵的任务。潜在地与此相结合，菌落也显示出一致的高代谢缩放模式，其与生物体缩放模式相匹配。由于任务表现与菌落生长和新陈代谢直接相关，因此这些结果导致了一种假设，即较大的菌落通过调整工作组织的变化来实现能源使用的规模经济。为了研究群体大小如何影响工作组织，将在不同大小的实验室群体中测量工人在任务中的分布，个人任务专业化和工人活动水平。将同时测量菌落代谢、育雏生产和生长速率，以将行为组织与菌落代谢结果联系起来。此外，将评估蜂群人口统计学（包括工蜂大小和年龄分布）对代谢变化的贡献。将测量以下参数：（a）大小不同但年龄不变的菌落;（B）大小随时间发生个体遗传学变化的菌落;（c）大小操纵的菌落。实证研究将与模拟、微分方程和优化模型相结合，以探讨任务组织和活动的组成部分如何相互作用，以产生群体代谢和生产力的规模变化。

项目成果

A predator–prey model with Crowley–Martin functional response: A nonautonomous study

• DOI: 10.1111/nrm.12287
• 发表时间: 2020-10
• 期刊: Natural Resource Modeling
• 影响因子: 1.6
• 作者: Jai Prakash Tripathi;Sarita Bugalia;Vandana Tiwari;Yun Kang

Cancer as Multifaceted Disease

癌症是多方面的疾病

• DOI: 10.1051/mmnp/20127102
• 发表时间: 2012
• 期刊: Mathematical Modelling of Natural Phenomena
• 影响因子: 2.2
• 作者: Friedman, A.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of a diffusive predator-prey model with generalist predator

• DOI: 10.3934/dcdss.2020132
• 发表时间: 2020-11
• 期刊: Discrete & Continuous Dynamical Systems - S
• 作者: Dingyong Bai;Jianshe Yu;Yun Kang

Effects of vitellogenin in age polyethism and population dynamics of honeybees

卵黄蛋白原对蜜蜂年龄多群体和种群动态的影响

• DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2018.09.011
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: Ecological Modelling
• 影响因子: 3.1
• 作者: Rodriguez Messan, Marisabel;Page, Robert E.;Kang, Yun
• 通讯作者: Kang, Yun

Nutritional regulation influencing colony dynamics and task allocations in social insect colonies

影响群居昆虫群落动态和任务分配的营养调节

• DOI: 10.1080/17513758.2020.1786859
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Journal of Biological Dynamics
• 影响因子: 2.8
• 作者: Rao, Feng;Rodriguez Messan, Marisabel;Marquez, Angelica;Smith, Nathan;Kang, Yun
• 通讯作者: Kang, Yun