CAREER: Plasticity and evolution of maternal care in bumble bees

确定社会性是如何进化的是生物学的一个关键目标。关于摄食和营养，目前尚不清楚群居动物是如何进化来调节自己的个人觅食行为的，同时也参与了社交觅食行为，如为后代收集食物。大黄蜂被认为是社会性的，但它们有一个年度生命周期，在这个周期里，每年春天，孤独的蜂王必须发起新的巢。当它们在巢中发育时，蚁后直接照顾它们的第一个后代，只有当它们的女儿留在巢中并承担所有的育儿工作时，它们才停止这种照顾。这个项目研究了蜂王大黄蜂是如何从孤独到表达母爱，再到停止育儿的转变，并确定了这些变化是如何在分子水平上调节的。一个由来自当地社区学院和一所大学的本科生研究人员、一名研究生和一名博士后研究员组成的团队将开展这项研究。这将在社区学院和公立大学系统之间建立一座桥梁，并为传统上服务不足的学生提供宝贵的研究经验。亲身实践研究活动也将被整合到两门由PI教授的本科课程中，为学生提供课堂上的研究体验，并将开发一个基于大黄蜂生活史和保护的外展项目，向公众介绍这一受威胁的传粉者群体。父母照顾的演变和社会福利都是社会研究的基本主题。这两种血统对于考察社会行为是如何演变的尤为重要。这个项目探索了在蜂巢形成阶段从独居生活方式转变为社会生活方式的大黄蜂皇后的母爱规则和演变。首先，实验将导致后代投资和育苗的变化，以探索由亚社会昆虫和蜜蜂启发的假说，亚社会昆虫在这个生命阶段类似于大黄蜂女王，蜜蜂与大黄蜂有着共同的社会性起源。接下来，RNAseq将被用来识别随着后代投资的变化而改变表达模式的基因，从而成为个人喂养和育儿共同调节的候选基因。行为前体假说和新基因假说的证据将分别通过检查这些基因是否保守，或者它们在大黄蜂或它们所属的渐进式供应蜜蜂的谱系中是否是新的来探索。这个项目将提高我们对如何利用大黄蜂系统进化社会性的理解，大黄蜂系统比许多社会性谱系更具社会可塑性，但也比亚社会性昆虫表现出更大的社会复杂性。该项目还将对如何在社会制度中调节摄食行为产生新的见解，并阐明社会动物如何进化出调节个人营养平衡的机制，同时也对调节社会摄食行为的提示做出动态反应。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Identifying how sociality evolved is a key goal in biology. With respect to feeding and nutrition, it is unclear how social animals evolved to mediate their own personal feeding behavior while also engaging in social feeding behaviors, such as the collection of food for their offspring. Bumble bees are considered social, but they have an annual life cycle wherein each spring, solitary queens must initiate new nests. Queens directly care for their first offspring as they develop in the nest and only cease performing this care when their daughters remain in the nest and assume all brood care. This project examines how queen bumble bees navigate the transition from being solitary, to expressing maternal care, to ceasing brood care, and identifies how these changes are mediated at the molecular level. A team consisting of undergraduate researchers from local community colleges and a university, a graduate student, and a postdoctoral researcher, will carry out the research. This will create a bridge between community colleges and a public university system and give valuable research experiences to traditionally underserved students. Hands-on research activities will also be integrated into two undergraduate courses taught by the PI to give students research experience in the classroom, and an outreach program based on bumble bee life history and conservation will be developed to inform the public about this threatened pollinator group.The evolution of parental care and eusociality are both fundamental topics in social research. Lineages that exhibit both are particularly important systems for examining how social behavior evolves. This project explores the regulation and evolution of maternal care in bumble bee queens, which transition from a solitary to social lifestyle during the nest initiation stage. First, experiments that cause changes in offspring investment and brood care will be used to explore hypotheses inspired by both subsocial insects, which resemble bumble bee queens at this life stage, and also honey bees, which share a common origin of sociality with bumble bees. Next, RNAseq will be used to identify genes that change expression patterns in association with changes in offspring investment, and are thus candidates for the co-regulation of personal feeding and brood care. Evidence for the behavioral precursor hypothesis and the novel genes hypothesis will be explored by examining, respectively, whether these genes are conserved, or whether they are novel in either the bumble bees or in the lineage of progressively-provisioning bees they belong to. This project will improve our understanding of how sociality evolves using the bumble bee system, which is more socially plastic than many eusocial lineages but also exhibits greater social complexity than the subsocial insects. The project will also generate new insights into how feeding behavior is regulated in social systems, and shed light on how social animals have evolved mechanisms that mediate personal nutritional homeostasis while also dynamically responding to cues that mediate social feeding behaviors.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.