Ecological, physiological and molecular biological mechanisms integrating insect social behavior

生物学的一个主要目标是了解动物社会行为的整合机制。在社会性的蚜虫中，利他主义的个体被称为“士兵”，执行群体防御和家务管理。当士兵还年轻的时候，他们会在蜂群内执行相对安全的任务，比如清理胆汁。随着士兵年龄的增长，他们的任务涉及到更危险的外部活动，如殖民地防御。我们研究了这种年龄相关的分工的生态学、生理学和分子生物学机制，在士兵之间的这种年龄相关的分工，形成的胆小蜂，是一种模式物种，代表社会的蚜虫。

A major goal in biology is to understand the integrative mechanism of animal social behavior. In social aphids, altruistic individuals called "soldiers" perform colony defense and housekeeping. When the soldiers are young, they perform relatively safe tasks inside the colony such as gall cleaning. As the soldiers age, their tasks involve more dangerous outside activities such as colony defense. We investigated the ecological, physiological and molecular biological mechanisms of this age-dependent division of labor among the soldiers of a gall-forming aphid, Tuberaphis styraci, which is a model species representing social aphids.