DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Reproductive Consequences of Cooperation in a Polygynous Ant

社会群体是围绕合作而建立的，在这种合作中，个人共同努力使群体受益。人类作为一个社会物种的成功是建立在这种互利的基础上的，但我们对它的进化和维持知之甚少。如果合作团体的一个成员利用其他人的努力来获得不成比例的资源，那么合作团体就有可能受到欺骗。在亲属群体中，这些影响可以被亲属关系抵消。然而，非亲属之间合作的成本和收益更难以评估和解释。这种加州收获蚁提供了一个难得的机会来研究非亲属之间合作的成本和收益。在这个物种中，一些蚁后实行初级一夫多妻制，其中不相关的蚁后合作建立一个新的巢穴并共同抚养后代，形成了一个多家庭的群体。这项工作将调查什么样的生态条件有利于这个物种的合作进化，以及这些合作社会如何处理一些群体成员作弊的可能性。拟议的研究将与本科生培训相结合，学生参加实地和实验室研究。这是建立在主要研究者和研究生的优秀指导记录的基础上。研究人员还将与当地公园部门合作，提供突出这种不寻常的蚂蚁种群的教育材料。这项研究是我们理解社会进化的基础，并可能为人类社会中的合作与冲突问题提供见解。先前的工作表明，一夫多妻制人口中的殖民地比附近没有一夫多妻制的人口中的殖民地具有更低的生殖输出。这表明一夫多妻制可能是对当地环境限制的一种功能性反应。一夫多妻制的殖民地也面临着欺骗的问题，如果繁殖是不公平的分配之间的女王。对这些发现的解释是有限的，因为到目前为止研究的一夫多妻制和单女王种群是在不同的环境中。研究人员将量化单个群体中单女王与多女王殖民地的生殖输出，以确定生殖变化是环境驱动的，还是固有的殖民地属性。这项分析将结合食物补充实验，以确定是否在一夫多妻制殖民地繁殖资源有限。最后，相对女王的贡献，繁殖与工人生产内一夫多妻制的殖民地将通过微卫星进行分析，以确定女王是否公平地分享生殖。如果没有，这表明这些合作协会内部可能发生了微妙的欺骗。数据将在本地和ASU服务器空间存储至少5年，并永久存档。数据将被编入索引，并在发布后提供给开源数据库。

Social groups are built around cooperation, in which individuals work together to benefit the group. Human success as a social species is built around this mutual benefit, but we know little about its evolution and maintenance. Cooperative groups risk being vulnerable to cheating, if a group member takes advantage of the effort of others to secure a disproportionate amount of resources. In groups of relatives, these effects can be offset by kinship. However, the costs and benefits of cooperation among non-relatives are more difficult to assess and explain. The California harvester ant provides a rare opportunity to examine the costs and benefits of cooperation among non-relatives. In this species, some queens practice primary polygyny, in which unrelated queens cooperatively build a new nest and rear offspring together, forming what is essentially a multi-family colony. The proposed work will investigate what ecological conditions favor the evolution of cooperation in this species, and how these cooperative societies deal with the possibility of cheating by some group members. The proposed research will be combined with undergraduate training, in which students participate in field and laboratory research. This builds on a record of mentoring excellence by the principal investigator and graduate student. The researchers will also work in conjunction with the local parks department to provide educational materials highlighting this unusual ant population. This research is fundamental to our understanding of social evolution, and may provide insight into the issues of cooperation and conflict in human societies.Prior work has shown that colonies in the polygynous population have lower reproductive output than those in a nearby population without polygyny. This suggests polygyny may be a functional response to local environmental constraints. Polygynous colonies also face issues of cheating, if reproduction is non-equitably distributed among queens. Interpretation of these findings is limited, because the polygynous and single-queen populations investigated so far are in different environments. The researchers will quantify the reproductive output of single- versus multi-queen colonies within a single population, to determine whether variation in reproduction is environmentally driven, or an intrinsic colony attribute. This analysis will be combined with a food supplement experiment, to determine whether reproduction in polygynous colonies is resource limited. Finally, relative queen contributions to reproduction versus worker production within polygynous colonies will be analyzed via microsatellites, to determine whether queens share in reproduction equitably. If not, this suggests that subtle cheating may be taking place within these cooperative associations. Data will be stored locally and on ASU server space for a minimum of 5 years, with the expectation of permanently archiving them. Data will be indexed and made available to an open source data depository after publication.