Dissertation Research: Population Biology of the Eastern Tent Caterpillar

东部帐篷毛虫生活在它们在樱桃和苹果树上合作建造的丝质帐篷中。它们也会合作寻找食物，通过化学痕迹将资金传达给帐篷同伴。它们的社会组织以及这种合作系统是如何进化的问题东部帐篷毛虫是已知的唯一一种利用复杂的化学通讯系统进行合作觅食的非群居昆虫这一系统的起源给基于个体适合度的经典选择理论提出了一些问题。利用在野外取样和在实验室研究蚁群的便利，将测量蚁群之间和内部的遗传关系以及个体幼虫对帐篷伴侣和帐篷的行为偏好。观察到的模式应该对东部帐篷毛虫社会系统的可能进化过程有所启发。

Eastern tent caterpillars live communally in silken tents which they construct cooperatively in cherry and apple trees. They also cooperate in the search for food, communicating their funds to tentmates via chemical trails. Their social organization both the question of how this cooperative system evolved the eastern tent caterpillar is the only non-eusocial insect known to employ a complex chemical communication system for corperative foraging the origin of which poses some problems for classical selection theory based on individual fitness. Taking advantage of the ease with which colonies can be sampled in the field and studied in the laboratory, genetic relationships between and within colonies and behavioral preferences of individual caterpillars for tentmates and tents will be measure. The patterns observed should some light on the likely made of evolution of the eastern tent caterpillar social system.