Adaptive distribution of morphological specialists in social insects: New insights into the evolution of division of labor

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。劳动分工发生在生物组织的各个层面：例如，多细胞生物体中的细胞就像社会昆虫群体中的工人可能专门从事特定任务。这种专门化可以导致形态分化，从而导致进化创新。什么样的环境或社会条件有利于组件的这种专业化，需要什么样的系统级组织来获得这种专业化的好处？这个项目的目标是开发一个新的，定量的了解形态不同的专家组成功的贡献。龟蚁（Cetrantes rohweri）将被用作模型系统。 这些蚂蚁产生两种类型的工人，其中一种是高度专业化的防御士兵，头部呈板状，用于阻止巢穴入口。由于其成本和可行性，专家的生产是有限的。因此，保卫殖民地的关键在于在正确的时间将专家有效地分配到正确的地方。该项目将研究这种动态分配是如何发生的，以及蚂蚁社会如何权衡风险和资源;它将研究专家对群体适应度的贡献;并将开发一个模型来确定在可变工作环境中分配专家的最佳策略。因此，该项目将为专业化演变的重要问题提供新的见解。此外，由于它侧重于国防专家，它将对任何系统中国防资源的最佳分配产生影响。该项目的结果不仅有助于提高对专业化演变的理解，还有助于工程师设计改进的分布式问题解决算法，例如在集体机器人中。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Division of labor occurs at all levels of biological organization: for example, cells in a multi-cellular organism just as workers in a social insect colony may specialize on particular tasks. Such specialization can lead to morphological differentiation, and thus to evolutionary innovation. What environmental or social conditions favor such specialization of components, and what system-level organization is needed to reap the benefits of such specialization? The objective of this project is to develop a new, quantitative understanding of the contribution of morphologically distinct specialists to group success. Turtle ants (Cephalotes rohweri) will be used as model system. These ants produce two types of workers, one of which is a highly specialized defense soldier with a plate-shaped head, used to block nest entrances. Because of their costs and inflexibility, the production of specialists is limited. Defense of the colony may thus crucially depend on effective allocation of specialists to the right place at the right time. The project will investigate how this dynamic allocation takes place, and thus how the ant society trades-off risk and resources; it will investigate the contribution of specialists to colony fitness; and a model will be developed to determine the optimal strategy for distributing specialists in a variable work environment. The project will thus offer new insights on important questions about the evolution of specialization. In addition, because it focuses on defense specialists, it will have implications for optimal allocation of defense resources in any system. The results of this project will serve not only to increase understanding of the evolution of specialization, but also help engineers design improved distributed problem solving algorithms, for example in collective robotics.