The evolutionary ecology of social responsiveness in a wild insect

声音交流是许多动物物种进行社会互动的一种重要方式。声学社会互动通常是相互的；一个人产生一个信号，然后另一个人对此做出反应。然而，个体对社会邻居的声学反应可能会有差异。例如，一些个体可以根据其他个体的声音信号不断调整其信号，而其他个体可能完全没有反应。研究社会反应很重要，因为它拓宽了我们的视角，让我们了解社会反应的变异是如何在野外进化和维持的。此外，最近有研究表明，社会互动可以影响进化的速度，而这种影响是标准理论所没有预测到的，这使得社会互动成为进化的重要修饰者，但其方式尚不完全清楚。尽管社会互动具有深远的生态和进化后果，但记录终身健身成本和社会反应好处的研究，在野外是不存在的。在我的研究项目中，我将使用野蟋蟀(Gryllus Campestris)来研究自然种群中社会反应的生态学和进化。对于田野蟋蟀来说，声音信号是有关社会环境结构的主要信息来源；这些声音被用来表示雄性的竞争能力和对雌性的吸引力。田野蟋蟀是非常适合拟议项目的研究物种，因为可以同时为大量个体自动收集大量的声音输出。此外，可以很容易地自动监测个体的自然活动，从而允许在大量与生态相关的和可变的社会背景下测量声音信号。在我的项目中，我的目标是解决以下悬而未决的问题：1)个体的社会反应能力是否不同；2)社会反应能力是否处于自然选择之下；以及3)社会反应能力的个体差异是否代表另一种生殖策略。

Acoustic communication represents one important way by which many animal species interact socially. Acoustic social interactions are often reciprocal; one individual produces a signal to which other individual then responds. However, there might be variation on how responsive individuals are on their acoustic responses towards their social neighbors. Some individuals can, for example, adjust its signals constantly according to acoustic signals of others while other individuals might be completely unresponsive. Studying social responsiveness is important since it widens our perspective on how variation in social responsiveness is evolved and maintained in the wild. Moreover, it has been recently shown that social interactions can affect the speed of evolution in ways not predicted by standard theories making social interaction important modifiers of evolution in ways not yet fully understood. Even though social interactions have far reaching ecological and evolutionary consequences, studies documenting lifetime fitness costs and benefits of social responsiveness are, nevertheless, absent for the wild. In my research project, I will use Field cricket (Gryllus campestris) to study ecology and evolution of social responsiveness in a natural population. For field crickets, acoustic signals represent the main source of information about the structure of the social environment; these sounds are used to signal competitive ability to males and attractiveness to females. Field crickets are extremely suitable study species for the proposed project because large numbers of acoustic output can be collected automatically for large numbers of individuals simultaneously. Moreover, the natural movements of individuals can readily be monitored automatically, which consequently allows for the measurement of acoustic signaling in large numbers of ecologically relevant, and variable, social contexts. In my project I aim to address the outstanding questions of i) whether individuals differ in social responsiveness ii) whether social responsiveness is under natural selection in the wild, and iii) whether individual differences in social responsiveness represent alternative reproductive tactics.