Eusociality, conflict, and obligate social parasites
Ants live in collaborative social family groups: a colony contains one or several reproductive queens and many sterile workers, whose sole purpose is to help with colony maintenance and rearing new larvae.
Social species provide an ideal system to study the intricacies of cooperation and conflict between individuals. Very few species meet the stringent relateness structure dictaded by Hamilton's rule. This provides opportunity for cheaters, or selfish lineages, to evolve; and thus opportunity to study mechanisms of behavioral and life history changes in varying social environments.
Obligate social parasites are species that hijack the social system of their hosts to benefit their own reproduction throughout their whole lives. Inquiline parasites are workerless (or nearly workerless) species infecting nests of other, often closely related species. These 'cuckoo' ants have evolved over one hundred times independently in ants.
I am investigating the genetic, life-history, and behavioral mechanisms through which obligate social parasites can and do evolve in ants, using leaf-cutting ants and their social parasites.
Photo by Ana Jesovnik, Parque Nacional Teniente Enciso, Boquerón, Paraguay
Social species provide an ideal system to study the intricacies of cooperation and conflict between individuals. Very few species meet the stringent relateness structure dictaded by Hamilton's rule. This provides opportunity for cheaters, or selfish lineages, to evolve; and thus opportunity to study mechanisms of behavioral and life history changes in varying social environments.
Obligate social parasites are species that hijack the social system of their hosts to benefit their own reproduction throughout their whole lives. Inquiline parasites are workerless (or nearly workerless) species infecting nests of other, often closely related species. These 'cuckoo' ants have evolved over one hundred times independently in ants.
I am investigating the genetic, life-history, and behavioral mechanisms through which obligate social parasites can and do evolve in ants, using leaf-cutting ants and their social parasites.
Photo by Ana Jesovnik, Parque Nacional Teniente Enciso, Boquerón, Paraguay