Descripción del proyecto
La historia evolutiva de la división del trabajo
Para comprender cómo evolucionó la vida en la Tierra, es importante comprender la división del trabajo y por qué ha evolucionado o no. En este contexto, el proyecto Division financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, se centrará en la cooperación para averiguar por qué la división del trabajo ha evolucionado con algunos rasgos y en algunas especies, pero no en otras. El proyecto aplicará un enfoque de investigación interdisciplinario para establecer un nuevo campo de investigación sobre por qué diferentes especies utilizan diferentes mecanismos para dividir el trabajo. Pondrá a prueba cómo la selección ha actuado en pro o en contra de la evolución de la división del trabajo en las poblaciones naturales de bacterias. También estudiará los insectos para comprender por qué la división del trabajo no ha evolucionado en todas las especies.
Objetivo
Division of labour is fundamental to the evolution of life on earth, allowing genes to work together to form genomes, cells to build organisms, pathogens to escape immune attack, and eusocial insect societies to achieve ecological dominance. Consequently, if we want to understand how life on earth evolved, we need to understand why division of labour does or, just as importantly, does not evolve. There are two major outstanding problems for our understanding of division of labour: First, how can we explain why division of labour has evolved with some traits, in some species, but not others? Given the potential benefits of dividing labour, why does it not arise more frequently in cooperative species? Second, in cases where division of labour has evolved, how can we explain the form that it takes? Why do factors such as the degree of specialisation, or mechanism used to produce different phenotypes, vary across species? I will combine my social evolution expertise with novel synthetic and genomic approaches to address these problems. I will explain the distribution and form of division of labour in the natural world, with an interdisciplinary research programme, divided into four work packages: (1) I will provide the first experimental test of the fundamental assumption that division of labour provides an efficiency benefit, by synthetically manipulating bacteria. (2) I will test how selection has acted for and against the evolution of division of labour in natural populations of bacteria, using novel genomic analysis techniques. (3) I will determine why division of labour evolved in some species, but not others, with an across species study on insects, and experimental evolution of bacteria. (4) I will establish a new field of research on why different species use different mechanisms to divide labour: genetic differences, environmental cues, or random assignment of roles. I will develop theory to explain this variation, and test this theory experimentally.
Ámbito científico
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Régimen de financiación
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantInstitución de acogida
OX1 2JD Oxford
Reino Unido