Collaborative Research: The Effects of Keystone Individuals on Collective Behavior

社会的集体行为产生于群体成员之间自组织的互动。传统上，群体成员被认为是相同的个体，但行为差异在自然界是普遍存在的。这种变化可能是极端的，一个群体成员，在这里被称为关键个体，可能比其他所有个体对群体的集体行为有更大的影响。例如，有些人可能领导一个小组，指导其他人，或充当信息或疾病的超级传播者。尽管关键人物对一个群体的成功有潜在的影响，但人们对这种影响是如何以及为什么产生的知之甚少。研究人员将利用易于操纵和在个体和群体层面上观察的社会性蜘蛛来检验关于集体行为出现的假设，这些假设在更复杂的系统中不容易评估。除了众多本科生和研究生的研究项目外，该项目还将通过建立和成功的推广项目，将拟议的工作转化为针对K-12学生教育的集体行为的实践活动。提高公众对无脊椎动物生物学知识的成人科学教育活动将包括公开讲座、媒体报道和在实地工作发生的当地社区的对话。本研究旨在探讨关键个体影响集体行为的机制、关键个体对集体行为发展的影响以及群体中关键个体存在的生态和进化后果。使用一个允许详细实验操作的模型系统，社会蜘蛛（Stegodyphus dumicola），将使研究人员能够发展一个广泛的理论，以促进对关键个体的科学进展。具体来说，这项工作将(1)测试关键个体是否在群体水平过程（如猎物捕获和疾病传播）中产生权衡，以及这些权衡如何改变不同环境下的群体表现；(2)揭示了关键个体对该领域集体行为发展影响的时间动态；(3)阐明关键个体对其他群体成员行为和集体结果的催化作用的行为机制；(4)设计通用的基于主体的模型，揭示关键个体影响集体行为的一般机制。研究人员将通过结合实验室和现场实验来解决这些问题，并用复杂的图像分析技术和社会网络理论进行分析，并进行计算建模。公布的数据集将上传到Dryad供其他人使用。

The collective behavior of societies emerges from self-organized interactions among group members. Traditionally, group members have been thought of as identical individuals, but behavioral variation is prevalent in nature. This variation can be extreme and one group member, referred to here as the keystone individual, may have a greater impact on the collective behavior of a group than all other individuals. For example, some individuals may lead a group, tutor others or function as super-spreaders of information or disease. Despite the potential impact of keystone individuals on the success of a group, little is known about how and why this influence emerges. The investigators will use social spiders that can be easily manipulated and observed at the individual and group levels to test hypotheses about the emergence of collective behavior, hypotheses that cannot be easily evaluated in more complex systems. In addition to the numerous undergraduate and graduate research projects this project will generate, the proposed work will also be translated into hands-on activities about collective behavior geared towards the education of K-12 students though established and successful outreach programs. Adult science education activities to enhance public knowledge of invertebrate biology will include public lectures, media coverage, and conversations at local communities where the field work occurs. This research aims to examine the mechanisms by which keystone individuals affect collective behavior, the effects of keystones on the development of collective behaviors and the ecological and evolutionary consequences of the presence of keystone individuals in groups. Using a model system that allows for detailed experimental manipulations, the social spider (Stegodyphus dumicola), will allow the investigators to develop a broad theory to enhance the progress of science on keystone individuals. Specifically, this work will (1) test whether keystone individuals produce tradeoffs among colony-level processes such as prey capture and disease spread, and how these tradeoffs change colony performance in different environments; (2) uncover the temporal dynamics of the effects of keystone individuals on the development of collective behaviors in the field; (3) elucidate the behavioral mechanisms that underlie the catalytic effects of keystone individuals on the behavior of other group members and collective outcomes; and (4) design versatile agent-based models that will uncover the general mechanisms by which keystone individuals influence collective behaviors. The investigators will address these questions by combining lab and field experiments, analyzed with sophisticated image analysis technology and social network theory, with computational modeling. Published data sets will be uploaded for use by others to Dryad.