Descrizione del progetto
Decifrare i meccanismi alla base della sterilità nelle formiche
Un fenomeno che si osserva frequentemente nelle colonie di insetti sociali, ma tuttora non chiarito, riguarda la sterilità delle caste operaie. La perdita della capacità di riprodursi è stata fino ad ora spiegata con l’ipotesi predominante della monogamia, ovvero la trasmissione indiretta di geni, oppure con quella dell’applicazione della cooperazione mediante la vigilanza. Il progetto AntPolice, finanziato dall’UE, studierà le circostanze che condizionano la sterilità delle formiche operaie e trarrà una conclusione sull’ipotesi più probabile. Questa indagine verrà condotta mediante una pionieristica analisi comparativa filogenetica che coinvolgerà centinaia di specie di formiche, prevedendo nuovi esperimenti di laboratorio su un genere di formiche polimorfico a livello sociale, la formica exsecta.
Obiettivo
The sterile worker castes found in the colonies of social insects are often cited as archetypal examples of altruism in nature. The challenge is to explain why losing the ability to reproduce has evolved as a superior strategy for transmitting genes into future generations. The leading explanation for the evolution of worker sterility is the monogamy hypothesis. The idea is that workers don't need to reproduce because they can transmit their genes indirectly by improving the reproductive success of the queen, who carries the same genes. For this to work, the queen should be monogamously mated, ensuring workers are raising full siblings, the genetic equivalent of their own young (r = 0.5). There has been no appropriate test of this hypothesis, however, and an alternative hypothesis, that worker sterility evolved via the enforcement of cooperation by policing, has not been ruled out. According to the policing hypothesis, workers suppress each other's reproduction by eating each other’s eggs or through aggression, leading to sterility through evolutionary time. Crucially, policing is predicted to evolve when relatedness is low, in contrast to the monogamy hypothesis.
Here, I propose an interdisciplinary approach that combines a cutting-edge phylogenetic comparative analysis across ~500 ant species with novel lab-based experiments on the socially polymorphic ant, Formica exsecta, to test between the low and high relatedness evolutionary pathways to worker sterility. Contrary to common belief, workers in most ant species can lay eggs due to their haplodiploid sex determination system, making them an ideal system for answering this question. This project will fill a crucial gap in our knowledge of how complex life on Earth evolved and potentially overturn the long-held hypothesis that high relatedness is the only route to cooperation.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinatore
90014 Oulu
Finlandia