Drivers of larval gregariousness in Lepidoptera

群居行为在许多动物中已经进化了许多次。群居性的盛行提出了许多有趣的进化问题；例如，如何平衡竞争与合作之间的冲突？社会行为的优点是什么？成本是什么？但它也导致了许多机械性的问题；动物是如何感知彼此的？它们是如何追踪彼此的行为的？该项目旨在利用Heliconiini（一种不同的新热带蝴蝶部落）作为研究系统来解决这些问题。群居幼虫行为在多个独立的谱系中进化，在某些情况下，密切相关的物种在产卵和幼虫行为上差异很大。该项目的主要目标是：i)制定方案，准确量化不同物种和幼虫阶段的群居行为。ii)进行比较分析，探索群居行为、颜色、捕食者躲避和寄主植物形态之间的相互作用。iii)进行实验，确定群居物种使用什么感官线索来维持群体凝聚力。iv)利用现有的比较基因组学和新的神经转录组学数据来确定可能影响幼虫行为的候选基因。

Gregarious behaviour has evolved many times in a wide range of animals. The prevalence ofgregariousness poses many interesting evolutionary questions; For example, how is the conflictbetween competition and cooperation balanced? What are the advantages of social behaviour? Andwhat are the costs? But it also leads to many mechanistic questions; how do animals sense each other?How do they track each other's behaviour?This project aims to tackle these questions using Heliconiini, a diverse tribe of Neotropical butterflies,as a study system. Gregarious larval behaviour has evolved in multiple independent lineages, and insome cases closely related species differ dramatically in egg laying and larval behaviour. The primarygoals of the project are to:i) Develop protocols to accurately quantify gregarious behaviour across species and larvalstages.ii) Conduct comparative analyses to explore the interactions between gregarious behaviour,colouration, predator avoidance, and host plant morphology.iii) Perform experiments to establish what sensory cues gregarious species use to maintain groupcohesion.iv) Use available comparative genomics and new neurotranscriptomic data to identify candidategenes that may contribute to larval behaviour.