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On this weblog publish, Leo Ohyama, a PhD candidate, discusses his examine “Ecological traits of social bugs: Colony, queen and employee dimension relationships reveal a nexus trait with broad ecological relevance“, which has been shortlisted for Purposeful Ecology’s 2023 Haldane Prize for Early Profession Researchers.
Concerning the Paper
Trait-based approaches in ecology permit researchers to affiliate ecological traits spanning phenology, morphology, and physiology to species identities. This gives an extra dimension to quantify and perceive the variety of ecological communities and assemblages. Nonetheless, these approaches are underdeveloped when assessing the ecological traits of eusocial organisms that stay in societies. For instance, in ants, sturdy division of labor can lead to a number of measures of physique dimension (employee dimension, queen dimension, colony dimension, male dimension) with every trait being merchandise of various ecological and evolutionary processes. Given these difficulties in assessing the ecological traits of eusocial organisms, our paper sought to raised quantify and disentangle this trait complexity utilizing ants as a mannequin organism.
Extra particularly, our paper assessed the trait by trait and trait by setting relationships of the ant fauna of Florida (USA). As a result of the ant communities of this state have been studied extensively, particularly within the context of nonnative ants which make as much as ~ 25% of the fauna, we had been capable of amass a complete information set throughout queen, employee, and colony traits for ~80% of the fauna (211 species). Moreover, we had been capable of classify species to dietary courses and nesting preferences. This stage of knowledge protection for a complete regional ant fauna is each novel and distinctive as a result of colony dimension estimates and queen specimens are hardly ever recorded and exhausting to acquire for many ant species.
The lacking hyperlink between most ecologically related traits throughout species in our examine was social complexity, measured because the morphological distinction between employees and queens, highlighting the significance in collected queen and colony information. We discovered sturdy assist for empirical relationships between colony dimension and social complexity throughout a number of subfamilies and genera. Each these traits additionally exhibited patterns throughout area with colony dimension and social complexity related to imply annual temperature and precipitation. Moreover social complexity was correlated with diets and nesting niches with omnivorous species exhibiting increased ranges of social complexity.
Finally our work suggests two main conclusions that apply to ants however doubtless different eusocial taxa. First, traits that may quantify the complexity of a society is one which captures maximal variation amongst different traits, serving as a nexus trait. Second, though acquiring detailed and complete trait information throughout regional faunas will be tough, it will probably enhance our understanding of a eusocial animal methods by linking the ecological parts represented by completely different traits underneath a single framework.
Concerning the Creator
I grew up in Tokyo, Japan the place most of my childhood was spent navigating numerous subway methods inside a cement and metal jungle. I’d sometimes take journeys to the seaside or native wildlife areas, however I didn’t actually get uncovered to nature till my increased training. Extra particularly, my introduction to ecology actually began with my field-based masters work on the College of Central Florida. There I ran large-scale subject experiments and surveys of ant populations which allowed me to achieve an appreciation of pure historical past in addition to a robust understanding of my examine system. Shifting into my PhD, I continued my work with ants however expanded the spatial scales at which I quantified and studied them. I received drawn to large-scale macroecology and developed a robust ardour for quantitative ecology and statistics. I prefer to say that the ants pulled me into being an ecologist however the information science expertise I picked up alongside the way in which saved me motivated and curious.
Proper now, my primary analysis pursuits are in two areas. The primary includes persevering with my traits-based analysis with social bugs, particularly within the context of nonnative species and the way they influence the variety and distribution of traits. I’m presently drafting a follow-up examine to the present one and hope to get it submitted quickly. The second space is the evaluation of insect variety at macroecological scales. I plan on ending my PhD this spring and beginning as a post-doctoral fellow on the College of Michigan working with Dr. Nate Sanders on initiatives regarding world ant ecology and bug declines.
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