This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2015, Research Using Biological Collections. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow to take transformative approaches to grand challenges in biology that employ biological collections in highly innovative ways. The title of the research plan for this fellowship to Sarah E. Bengston is "The evolutionary history of social parasitism in rock ants (genus: Temnothorax)." The host institution for this fellowship is University of Rochester, and the sponsoring scientist is Christian Rabeling.
Conflict and cooperation are foundational traits in many animal societies. The balance between these two forces takes many forms and often is reflected in the ecology of an entire species. Social parasitism is one such example and occurs when members of a social species exploit the resources of another social group or species, creating complex evolved traits in both the parasite and the exploited host. In social insects (such as ants and bees), social parasitism may occur both within and between species, meaning colonies may exploit colonies of the same species, other species or both. The research addresses the question of how parasitism arises. As parasitism can drive biodiversity, cost millions of dollars in agricultural damage annually, result in new vectors for disease transmission and affect conservation efforts, understanding how parasites arise and diversify is of fundamental interest to society.
The research portion of the fellowship investigates the first recorded case of social parasitism in the western U.S. species of brown rock ant (genus: Temnothorax). Specimens from biological collections at the California Academy of Science, the Smithsonian Institution and the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology are the source of molecular and morphological data for addressing three research objectives: elucidate the natural history of Temnothorax host/parasite pairs to determine how widespread is social parasitism, both within and between the species; reconstruct the evolutionary history of Temnothorax ants to understand how social parasitism arose; and identify if subsets of the population has become reproductively isolated, that is, displaying behavioral shifts and other adaptations resulting from limited gene flow with the rest of the population. Training goals include learning and mastering new molecular genetic and genomic techniques, working with curated natural history collections, and career development activities for a future research career with a focus on evolutionary genetics, sociobiology, kinship and kin-conflict theory, speciation, and the evolution of social parasitism. Broader impacts include educational outreach to undergraduate and graduate students and collaborating to develop a curriculum for the Biology in a Box program, which serves under-privileged students in 33 school systems in 5 states, to provide hands-on, inquiry based supplemental material for STEM curricula in K-12 schools.
