SG: Ecological Drivers of Life History Shifts in Invasive Social Wasps

入侵物种是全球环境变化的主要驱动力之一。因此，人们越来越有兴趣了解入侵者如何破坏生态系统，并制定管理战略，将其影响降至最低。通过操纵性野外实验和本地引入的范围比较，这项研究将调查入侵黄夹克如何以及何时在它们的生活史中表现出变异，特别是它们的蜂群是否每年死亡(衰老)，或者是多年生蜂群。这个项目有助于理解昆虫的生命周期变化，这种灵活性如何在景观尺度上调节生态过程，以及哪些因素相互作用影响多年性。这项研究将有助于预测物种入侵的影响可能如何应对气候变化。此外，该项目还将深入了解黄蜂及其猎物常见疾病的传播情况。由于黄夹克可能是公共公害，揭示多年性的原因可能会导致控制方法的发展，以防止该物种以及潜在的其他物种出现多年性。除了为本科生提供研究机会外，研究人员还将为K-6儿童开发一项关于入侵社会性昆虫的教育活动，了解社会性昆虫的生物学和潜在危害。该项目侧重于入侵社会性黄蜂对它们入侵的生态系统具有结构性影响的教育活动。这些黄蜂在关键的生活史特征(如一年生或多年生蜂群物候)上表现出可塑性，这极大地放大了它们的生态影响。研究人员明确测试了生态和气候因素如何相互作用，影响入侵者生活史特征的变化，并最终改变入侵影响。具体地说，这项研究调查了黄夹克的觅食行为和群落物候如何随着食物补贴、人工增温巢穴以模拟温和气候或同时受到补贴和人工增温的影响而发生变化。结合这种操纵和景观规模的猎物种群采样，该项目还量化了随后入侵对本地猎物的影响。这些实验将为黄夹克如何应对传粉者数量和气候变化提供洞察力。此外，研究人员将确定蜜蜂对黄蜂的消耗是否会影响病原体负载；这一点尤其重要，因为在非蜜蜂物种中检测到的蜜蜂病原体越来越多。病原体筛选将有助于区分(A)黄蜂是否通过捕食蜜蜂增加其病原体载量，(B)黄蜂是否通过捕食和袭击蜂箱传播病原体，以及(C)确定一年生和多年生蜂群之间的病理差异。了解影响生活史的因素对于预测性状进化或可塑性可能如何应对未来的全球气候变化至关重要。

Invasive species are one of the main drivers of global environmental change. Consequently, there is growing interest in understanding how invaders damage ecosystems and in developing management strategies to minimize their effects. Through manipulative field experiments and native-introduced range comparisons, this research will investigate how and when invasive yellowjackets express variation in their life cycle, specifically, whether their colonies die back (senescence) each year, or are perennial colonies. This project contributes to understanding of life cycle variation in insects, how such flexibility mediates ecological processes at the landscape scale, and what factors interact to influence perenniality. The research will help inform predictions as to how impacts of species invasions may respond to climate change. Furthermore, this project will provide insights into transmission of common diseases of wasps and their bee prey. As yellowjackets can be public nuisances, revealing the causes of perenniality may lead to the development of control methods that prevent the emergence of perenniality in this species and potentially in other species. In addition to providing research opportunities for undergraduates, the researchers will develop an educational activity on invasive social insects for K-6 children about the biology and potential hazards posed by social wasps.This project focuses on invasive social wasps that have structural effects on the ecosystems that they invade. These wasps express plasticity in key life history traits (e.g. annual or perennial colony phenology), which greatly magnifies their ecological impacts. The researchers explicitly test how ecological and climatic factors interact to affect shifts in invader life history traits and ultimately modify invasion impacts. Specifically this research investigates how yellowjacket foraging behavior and colony phenology shift in response to diet subsidies, artificial warming of the nest to simulate mild climate, or both subsidies and artificial warming. Coupling such manipulations with landscape-scale prey population sampling, this project also quantifies subsequent invasion impacts on native prey. These experiments will provide insights as to how yellowjackets may respond to changes in pollinator populations and climate change. Furthermore, researchers will determine whether wasp consumption of honey bees influences pathogen load; this is particularly important as honey bee pathogens are increasingly detected in non-honey bee species. Pathogen screening will help distinguish whether (a) wasps increase their pathogen load by consuming bees, (b) whether wasps transmit pathogens through predation and raiding of beehives, and (c) identify differences in pathology between annual and perennial colonies. Understanding the factors affecting life history is vital for predicting how trait evolution or plasticity may respond to future global climate change.