The evolution and plasticity of social networks traits

社会互动，如交配、战斗、合作或竞争资源，对动物生活的许多方面以及它们如何应对和应对环境变化都非常重要。因此，了解它们如何在几代人之间变化(可塑性)以及可能在几代人之间变化(进化)是至关重要的。然而，预测这些变化是困难的，因为社会互动取决于每个互动个体的表型和基因类型-这意味着任何变化都比单独由个人表达的特征更难预测。在这个项目中，我将开发一个实验系统，将社会网络分析与进化生物学的核心概念相结合，以了解社会特征如何应对不断变化的气候。这也将使我能够测试多水平选择的想法--多年来一直存在很大争议，但很少用实验数据直接测试。开发这一系统将使我能够在实验环境中测试生态学和社会互动进化中的许多关键假设。为了开发该系统并回答有关环境变化和特征变异的重要问题，我将使用群居的阿根廷木蟑螂(Blaptica Dubia)群体结合自动数据收集和分析方法进行两个实验。首先，我将测量在一代人的时间里，社会互动是如何随着干旱程度的增加而变化的。我将使用社交网络分析中提供的一系列测量方法，在个人、子群体和群体层面对社交表型进行量化。然后，我将使用动态社交网络模型来量化塑料变化，测试这些社交网络表型如何随着个人暴露在日益干燥的环境中而发生变化(使用气候控制的孵化器逐渐从50%的湿度降低到20%的湿度)。在第二个实验中，我将根据群体是否保持在20%、35%或50%的湿度来估计个人、子组和组级别的社交网络表型的适合度结果如何变化。这将使我能够估计社会行为的选择，从而预测其演变。因此，我将能够理解社会互动及其创造的社会结构可能如何应对世代内和世代之间的环境变化。我将使用无源集成应答器标签来持续记录个人在避难所的联系，使我能够量化定期的社会联系，从而推断社会网络。干旱是要考虑的理想环境变量，因为它预计会随着气候变化而变化，而且已知会影响成组的成本和收益，特别是在节肢动物中。群居蟑螂是解决此类问题的极佳研究生物体，因为它们很容易形成群体，参与集体行为和竞争互动，产生易于统计的后代，对湿度变化特别敏感，在某些物种中，它们形成的聚集体对人类健康有重要影响。该项目将提供有关社交网络特征形式的社会行为将如何在代内和跨代发生变化的关键信息，帮助我们更好地了解气候变化对动物种群的影响。我还将确定多层次选择的强度如何随环境而变化；提供实验数据，以解决长期存在的关于选择水平高于个体的选择水平何时有助于进化变化的争论。该项目将促进社会网络特征与进化生物学前沿思想的整合，并为更大的合作项目和拨款申请提供跳板。

Social interactions, such as mating, fighting, and cooperating or competing for resources, are very important for many aspects of animals' lives and for how they cope with and respond to environmental change. Therefore, understanding how they vary within generations (plasticity) and might change across generations (evolution) is of paramount importance. However, predicting these changes is difficult as social interactions depend on the phenotypes and genotypes of each of the interacting individuals - meaning any change is much more complex to predict than for traits solely expressed by individuals. In this project I will develop an experimental system to combine social network analysis with core concepts in evolutionary biology to understand how social traits respond to changing climates. This will also allow me to test ideas of multilevel selection - which have remained highly controversial for years but yet have rarely been directly tested with experimental data. Developing this system will thereafter allow me to test numerous key hypotheses in the ecology and evolution of social interactions in an experimental setting.To develop the system and answer important questions around environmental change and trait variation, I will use groups of the gregarious Argentinian wood roach (Blaptica dubia) combined with automated methods of data collection and analysis to conduct two experiments. In the first I will measure how social interactions change with increasing aridity within a generation. I will quantify social phenotypes at the individual, sub-group, and group level using the range of measures available from social network analysis. I will then test how these social network phenotypes change as individuals are exposed to increasingly dry environments (reducing from 50% humidity to 20% humidity gradually using a climate-controlled incubator), using dynamic social network models to quantify plastic change.In the second experiment I will estimate how the fitness consequences of social network phenotypes at the individual, sub-group, and group level change depending on whether the groups are kept at 20, 35, or 50% humidity. This will allow me to estimate selection on social behaviour and therefore predict its evolution. I will therefore be able to understand how social interactions and the social structures they create might respond to environmental change both within-generations and across-generations.I will use passive integrated transponder tags to continuously record individuals associating at shelters, allowing me to quantify regular social associations and so infer social networks. Aridity is the ideal environmental variable to consider as it is predicted to change with climate change and is known to affect the costs and benefits of grouping, especially in arthropods. Gregarious cockroaches such as B. dubia are excellent study organisms for questions such as these, as they readily form groups, engage in collective behaviour as well as competitive interactions, produce offspring which can be counted easily, are particularly sensitive to changes in humidity, and in some species their formation of aggregations has important consequences for human health. This project will provide key information on how social behaviours, in the form of social network traits, will change both within- and across-generations, helping us better understand the consequences of climate change for animal populations. I will also identify how the strength of multilevel selection varies with the environment; providing experimental data to address the long-running debate about when levels of selection above that of the individual contribute to evolutionary change. This project will boost the integration of social network traits with ideas at the forefront of evolutionary biology and provide a springboard for larger collaborative projects and grant applications.