PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Many social animals display collective activity cycles based on synchronous behavioural oscillations across group members. A classic example is the colony cycle of army ants, where thousands of individuals undergo stereotypical biphasic behavioural cycles of about one month. Cycle phases coincide with brood developmental stages, but the regulation of this cycle is otherwise poorly understood. Here, we probe the regulation of cycle duration through interactions between brood and workers in an experimentally amenable army ant relative, the clonal raider ant. We first establish that cycle length varies across clonal lineages using long-term monitoring data. We then investigate the putative sources and impacts of this variation in a cross-fostering experiment with four lineages combining developmental, morphological and automated behavioural tracking analyses. We show that cycle length variation stems from variation in the duration of the larval developmental stage, and that this stage can be prolonged not only by the clonal lineage of brood (direct genetic effects), but also of the workers (indirect genetic effects). We find similar indirect effects of worker line on brood adult size and, conversely (but more surprisingly), indirect genetic effects of the brood on worker behaviour (walking speed and time spent in the nest).
摘要：
许多社交动物基于群体成员之间的同步行为振荡而表现出集体活动周期。一个典型的例子是军蚁的殖民地周期，成千上万的人经历了大约一个月的刻板的双相行为周期。周期阶段与育龄发育阶段一致，但是对这个周期的调节却知之甚少。这里,我们通过在实验上适合的军队蚂蚁亲戚中的育苗和工人之间的相互作用来探索周期持续时间的调节，克隆入侵者蚂蚁.我们首先使用长期监测数据确定周期长度在克隆谱系之间变化。然后，我们在交叉培养实验中研究了这种变异的推定来源和影响，该实验具有四个谱系，形态学和自动行为跟踪分析。我们表明，周期长度的变化源于幼虫发育阶段持续时间的变化，这个阶段不仅可以通过育苗的克隆谱系（直接遗传效应）来延长，还有工人（间接遗传效应）。我们发现工人线对成年成年子女的间接影响类似，相反（但更令人惊讶的是），育巢对工人行为的间接遗传影响(步行速度和在巢中花费的时间)。
