Collaborative Research: Social Organization, Behavioral Development and Functional Neuroplasticity in the Ant Genus Pheidole

蚁群有着惊人的分工：蚁后产卵，而不能繁殖的工蚁则负责照料幼蚁、觅食和防御。工人执行的任务取决于其规模，年龄和经验。 蚂蚁的任务表现是如何被少量的神经组织--大脑--所控制的呢？ 该项目的目标是发现蚁群中工蚁大脑的差异如何控制任务表现，以及物种的生态如何影响工蚁的大脑结构和行为。 随着年龄的增长，蚂蚁可能会改变任务，开始是护士，最后是觅食者。他们的大脑需要有可塑性，这样他们才能产生与年龄相适应的行为。在某些物种中，工蚁会表现出特殊的行为，比如保卫殖民地，它们还拥有大而有力的下颚，使它们成为有效的士兵。 如果工蚁是专门防御的，它们的大脑必须对与殖民地威胁有关的刺激做出反应，并控制攻击行为。因此，护士的大脑应该只对育雏的需要做出反应，而防御者的大脑应该对敌人的威胁做出反应。该项目将分析蚂蚁的社会行为，并研究不同年龄和任务的工蚁大脑大小，大脑分区和单个神经细胞的差异，以及不同物种工蚁大脑的化学成分。 预期的微妙的大脑差异将有助于理解大脑结构和功能的轻微变化如何导致明显的行为差异，以及行为如何在成熟过程中发展。 该项目将在行为、解剖、神经生物学和分子技术方面培训研究生和本科生（包括少数民族学生），并通过向K-12学生介绍行为、神经科学、生态学和进化来丰富他们的教育。

Ant colonies have a striking division of labor: queens lay eggs, while workers, unable to reproduce, perform tasks such as brood care, foraging and defense. The task a worker performs depends on its size, age and experience. How is task performance in ants controlled by a tiny amount of nerve tissue, the brain? The goal of the project is to discover how differences in the brains of worker ants in a colony control task performance, and how the ecology of a species may influence worker brain structure and behavior. Ants may change tasks as they age, beginning as nurses and ending as foragers. Their brains need to be plastic so that they can generate age-appropriate behavior. In some species, workers show specialized behaviors, such as defending the colony, and are equipped with large and powerful jaws that make them effective soldiers. If workers are specialized for defense, their brains must respond to stimuli associated with threats to the colony and control aggressive behavior. Thus the brain of a nurse should respond only to the needs of brood and the brain of a defender should respond to threats from enemies. The project will analyze ant social behavior and examine age- and task-specific differences in the size of worker brains, brain compartments and individual nerve cells as well as the chemical composition of the brains of workers of different species in an extremely diverse group of ants. The expected subtle brain differences will help to understand how slight changes in brain structure and function can result in pronounced behavioral differences and how behavior develops during maturation. The project will train graduate and undergraduate students (including minority students) in behavioral, anatomical, neurobiological and molecular techniques and enrich the education of K-12 students by introducing them to behavior, neuroscience, ecology and evolution.