Evolution of Complex Colony Structure in Social Insects

非技术总结，Herbers，J. IBN-9507377 社会性昆虫复杂群体结构的演化 社会行为是个体之间相互作用的产物。社会系统是一个物种在特定环境条件下进化出的行为特征的复合体。该项目的目标是了解特定的环境条件如何影响昆虫的社会系统。 PI先前研究了两个种群的森林蚂蚁Myrmica punctiventris。佛蒙特州伯灵顿附近的一个种群有一个蚁群，其中包括一个蚁后和她所有的子工蚁。蚁后在这些蚁群中产卵，工蚁负责照料它们，寻找食物，保持巢穴清洁，等等。第二个种群在纽约的奥尔巴尼附近，它的社会制度与佛蒙特州的种群有很大的不同。在那里，一个殖民地可以包含一个蚁后家庭和一个单独的工蚁家庭。 两个完全不同的家庭共享生活区，一个家庭负责产卵，另一个家庭负责工作。 本项目的目标是了解驱使佛蒙特州和纽约人口向两个不同方向发展的环境条件。研究人员将在一个大型的野外实验中操纵食物的可用性和筑巢地点的可用性。 通过在三年的实验中绘制巢穴的占用率和生殖生物学，他们应该能够确定这两个环境因素是否以及如何影响社会系统。 PI还将继续对该物种进行详细的遗传学研究。 她会克隆DNA 用于遗传实验的合适标记。这些DNA标记将产生关于谁是蚁巢中工人和繁殖者的母亲和父亲的信息。有了这些数据，就有可能衡量社会制度的遗传决定因素的重要性。

Non-technical Summary, Herbers, J. IBN-9507377 Evolution of Complex Colony Structure in Social Insects Social behavior is the outgrowth of interactions among individuals. Social systems are complexes of behavioral traits that have evolved within a species in response to certain environmental conditions. The goal of this project is to understand how particular environmental conditions affect social systems in insects. The PI has previously studied two populations of the forest ant Myrmica punctiventris. One population near Burlington Vermont, has ant colonies that contain a single queen and all her daughter workers. Within those colonies the queen lays her eggs, and the workers care for them, forage for food, keep the nest clean, and so on. A second population near Albany, New York is vastly different in its social system from the Vermont population. There, a colony can contain a family of queens and a separate family of workers. Two completely different families share living quarters, with one family dominating the egg-laying and the second family doing the work. The goal of the present project is to understand the environmental conditions that have driven the Vermont and New York populations in two such different directions. The researchers will manipulate food availability and availability of nesting sites in a large field experiment. By charting occupancy of nests and reproductive biology throughout the three-year experiment, they should be able to determine if and how these two environmental factors affect social systems. The PI will also will continue detailed genetic work on this species. She will clone DNA to find suitable markers to use in genetic experiments. These DNA markers will yield information on who is the mother and who is the father of workers and reproductives in ant nests. With these data, it will be possible to measure the importance of genetic determinants of social systems as well.