DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Benefits of Cooperative Food Search in the Maintenance of Family Living in Ocellated Antbirds

这个项目的主要目标是为生物学中的一个基本问题做出贡献：脊椎动物如何通过自然选择来维持社会和合作行为。这项研究将试图确定，群体生活的好处是通过帮助近亲生存和繁殖间接获得的，还是直接从个人之间的相互互动中获得的，而不考虑亲属关系。这些假说将在哥斯达黎加La Selva生物站的受精卵蚁鸟身上进行测试。有齿蚁鸟是社会性的，专门以节肢动物为食，白天游牧蚂蚁群会冲到它们身上。蚂蚁很难监控，因为它们经常在晚上活动，所以找到它们对鸟类来说是一个问题。初步数据显示，这些鸟跟随邻居寻找蜂群(合作觅食)。数据还表明，觅食的鸟类对某些个体具有攻击性，但对其他个体没有攻击性。在蜂群中相互容忍邻居将提供获得食物的途径。合作的食物搜索将进行测试，方法是在夜间清除蚂蚁军团，并跟踪无线电标记的鸟类，直到它们找到新的蚁群。分子标记被用来调查邻居是否是近亲。模拟邻居和陌生人与局部觅食鸟类的关系程度不同，将通过录音发声来评估这些鸟类是否能够识别亲戚或邻居并相应地分配容忍度。拟议研究的学术价值是通过评估自然条件下的一种新的合作机制来评估群体生活和社会性的好处。此外，这项研究将提高目前对专职军蚁追随鸟类行为的认识。这一信息很重要，因为它们是对它们栖息的热带森林中的森林碎片化最敏感的鸟类。未来的保护策略可以通过考虑它们的社会行为来改进。这个项目以教育的形式对社会产生了广泛的影响。该项目已经并将继续为获得科学研究机会有限的学生提供教育和培训。该项目的调查人员已经并将继续为不能来到拉塞尔瓦的本科生，以及保护区内和周围的儿童、青少年和当地博物学家导游提供教育讲座。后一组人极大地受益于并欣赏来自在他们工作的同一地区工作的生物学家的新信息，他们将这些信息传递给当地社区和生态旅游者。

The main goal of this project is to contribute to a fundamental question in biology: how social and cooperative behaviors are maintained by natural selection in vertebrates. The research will attempt to determine if benefits of group living are indirectly obtained by helping close relatives to survive and reproduce or if benefits are directly obtained from mutual interactions between individuals, regardless of kinship. Those hypotheses will be tested in the Ocellated Antbird at La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica. Ocellated Antbirds are social and feed exclusively on arthropods flushed by marching swarms of nomadic army ants during the day. The ants are difficult to monitor because they often move at night, so that finding them is a problem for the birds. Preliminary data suggest that these birds follow neighbors to find swarms (cooperative food searching). The data also show that foraging birds are aggressive towards some individuals but not others. Mutual tolerance of neighbors at swarms would provide access to food. Cooperative food searching will be tested by removing army ant colonies at night and tracking radio-tagged birds until they find new colonies. Molecular markers are being used to investigate whether neighbors are close relatives. Simulated presence of neighbors and strangers with different degrees of relatedness to focal foraging birds will be accomplished with recorded vocalizations to evaluate whether these birds are able to identify relatives or neighbors and allocate tolerance accordingly. The intellectual merits of the proposed research are the assessment of benefits of group living and sociality through the evaluation of a novel mechanism of cooperation under natural conditions. In addition, this study will improve current knowledge on the behavior of obligate army-ant-following birds. This information is important because these are the most sensitive birds to forest fragmentation in the tropical forests that they inhabit. Future conservation strategies could be improved by taking their social behavior into account. This project has broad impacts to society in the form of education. The project has and will continue to provide education and training to students with limited access to research opportunities in science. The investigators of this project have and will continue to offer educational talks to undergraduates that cannot come to La Selva, and to children, teenagers, and local naturalist guides in and around the protected areas. The latter group greatly benefits and appreciates new information coming from biologists working in the same areas where they work, and they pass this information along to the local communities and to ecotourists.