Towards understanding the evolution of workforce organization in social spiders

关于劳动分工的讨论构成了许多关于无脊椎动物社会进化的文献的基础。分工是一种劳动力组织，在这种组织中，个人专门从事团队运作所需的维护任务的子集。高水平的个人任务专业化被认为是有益的，因为专家被预测在各自的任务中表现优于多面手，而由不同专业个人组成的小组预计将优于同类群体。分工的好处可能在真社会性昆虫中得到了最好的证明，然而，现有的数据表明，分工可以提高非真社会性群体的表现，甚至是从事合作性双亲护理的个人对的表现。尽管它有直观的吸引力，但一些研究人员认为，任务专业化和加强分工可能并不总是受到青睐，劳动力组织的一些方面，如动态任务切换，可能是社会团体成功的更重要决定因素。在对殖民地施加的要求随时间变化很大的环境中，这一点可能尤其正确。使用来自Anelosimus(新大陆)和Stegodyphus(东半球)属的六个独立进化的社会蜘蛛谱系，我们建议1)表征自然和实验群体中的劳动力组织模式，2)测试个体特征和他们的任务绩效特征之间的关联，3)检查劳动力组织中的群体间差异与群体成功的联系程度，以及这些关系如何基于周围栖息地(例如，低地雨林和云雾森林)而变化，4)探索劳动力如何改变他们的任务绩效模式，以响应生态需求的变化，以及5)仔细研究自组织在产生在社会蜘蛛中看到的劳动力组织模式方面的作用。拟议的研究将以一种罕见的方式，批判性地评估劳动分工相对于劳动力组织的其他方面在不同环境中的适应性意义。就它们而言，这些群居蜘蛛代表着进行拟议研究的非常容易驯服和经过良好审查的系统。

Discussions of division of labor form the basis of much of the literate on social evolution in invertebrates. Division of Labor is a kind of workforce organization where individuals specialize on a subset of the maintenance tasks required for group function. High levels of individual task specialization are argued to be beneficial because specialists are predicted outperform generalists at their respective tasks, and groups composed of diverse sets of specialized individuals are predicted to outperform homogeneous groups. The benefits of division labor are likely best documented in the eusocial insects, however, the available data suggest division of labor can enhance the performance of non-eusocial groups and even pairs of individuals engaged in cooperative biparental care. In spite of its intuitive appeal, some researchers have argued that task specialization and enhanced division of labor might not always be favored, and that aspects of workforce organization like dynamic task switching may be more important determinants of social group success. This may be particularly true in environments where the demands imposed on colonies vary widely through time. Using six independently evolved lineages of social spiders from across the Anelosimus (New World) and Stegodyphus (Old World) genera, we propose to 1) characterize patterns of workforce organization in natural and experimental colonies, 2) test for associations between individuals' traits and their task performance profiles, 3) examine the degree to which between-group differences in workforce organization are linked to group success and how these relationships change based on the surrounding habitat (e.g., lowland rain forests vs. cloud forests), 4) probe how workforces change their patterns of task performance in response to shifts in ecological demands, and 5) scrutinize the role of self-organization in generating the patterns of workforce organization seen in social spiders. The proposed studies will critically evaluate the adaptive significance of division of labor versus other aspects of workforce organization in contrasting environments in a manner rarely achievable.  For their part, these social spiders represent are extraordinarily tractable and well vetted system for conducting the proposed studies.