The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.
This award will support a twenty-four-month research fellowship by Dr. Adam R. Smith to work with Dr. William T. Wcislo at Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama. Support for this project is provided by the Office of International Science and Engineering's Americas Program.
Social insect colonies, characterized by cooperation and the sterility of most individuals, represent one of the fundamental transitions in evolution: from individuals each seeking to maximize their own fitness to cooperating groups supporting the reproduction of a few colony members. Studying this transition is impossible in most social species because all individuals live in groups. However some insect species, including the neotropical bee Megalopta, can facultatively switch between living solitarily and in social groups with a queen and worker(s). This switch allows the study of how cooperative groups emerge from individual behavioral choices. The 50 hectare forest dynamics study plot at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama is being used to test two hypotheses for how resource availability and distribution influence this transition. The first is whether increased resource availability increases the probability of females staying as helpers and forming social groups in order to gain indirect fitness benefits. The second is whether variance in resource quality, especially protein content, influences the condition of individual females such that some are more likely to remain in the nest as non-reproductive workers. The project exploits key resources only available at STRI in Panama: the 50 ha forest plot, comprehensive pollen key, and canopy cranes. These integrated studies of ecology and behavior are advancing our understanding of how cooperating groups emerge from individual behavioral choices.
