Towards understanding the evolution of workforce organization in social spiders

对劳动分工的讨论构成了许多关于无脊椎动物社会进化的文学作品的基础。劳动分工是一种劳动力组织，其中个人专门从事小组功能所需的维护任务的子集。高水平的个人任务专业化被认为是有益的，因为专家预测优于通才在各自的任务，和不同的专业化的个人组成的群体预测优于同质群体。分工的好处可能是最好的记录在真社会性昆虫，然而，现有的数据表明，分工可以提高非真社会性群体的表现，甚至对个人从事合作双亲照顾。尽管它直观的吸引力，一些研究人员认为，任务专业化和加强劳动分工可能并不总是受到青睐，劳动力组织的方面，如动态任务转换可能是社会群体成功的更重要的决定因素。在对殖民地的要求随着时间的推移而变化很大的环境中，这可能尤其如此。使用六种独立进化的社会蜘蛛谱系，（新世界）和Stegodyphus（旧大陆）属，我们建议1）在自然和实验殖民地的劳动力组织模式的特点，2）测试个人的特质和他们的任务绩效档案之间的关联，3）研究劳动力组织中的组间差异与组成功的联系程度，以及这些关系如何根据周围的栖息地（例如，低地雨林vs.云雾森林），4）探索劳动力如何改变他们的任务表现模式，以应对生态需求的变化，和5）仔细检查自组织的作用，在产生劳动力组织模式中看到社会蜘蛛。拟议中的研究将批判性地评估劳动分工与劳动力组织的其他方面在对比环境中的适应意义的方式很少实现。 对他们来说，这些社会蜘蛛代表了非常容易驾驭和经过良好审查的系统，用于进行拟议的研究。

Discussions of division of labor form the basis of much of the literate on social evolution in invertebrates. Division of Labor is a kind of workforce organization where individuals specialize on a subset of the maintenance tasks required for group function. High levels of individual task specialization are argued to be beneficial because specialists are predicted outperform generalists at their respective tasks, and groups composed of diverse sets of specialized individuals are predicted to outperform homogeneous groups. The benefits of division labor are likely best documented in the eusocial insects, however, the available data suggest division of labor can enhance the performance of non-eusocial groups and even pairs of individuals engaged in cooperative biparental care. In spite of its intuitive appeal, some researchers have argued that task specialization and enhanced division of labor might not always be favored, and that aspects of workforce organization like dynamic task switching may be more important determinants of social group success. This may be particularly true in environments where the demands imposed on colonies vary widely through time. Using six independently evolved lineages of social spiders from across the Anelosimus (New World) and Stegodyphus (Old World) genera, we propose to 1) characterize patterns of workforce organization in natural and experimental colonies, 2) test for associations between individuals' traits and their task performance profiles, 3) examine the degree to which between-group differences in workforce organization are linked to group success and how these relationships change based on the surrounding habitat (e.g., lowland rain forests vs. cloud forests), 4) probe how workforces change their patterns of task performance in response to shifts in ecological demands, and 5) scrutinize the role of self-organization in generating the patterns of workforce organization seen in social spiders. The proposed studies will critically evaluate the adaptive significance of division of labor versus other aspects of workforce organization in contrasting environments in a manner rarely achievable.  For their part, these social spiders represent are extraordinarily tractable and well vetted system for conducting the proposed studies.