social behavior

Helen McCreery

Tuesday, November 14th

In-Person Meeting
Virtual Zoom Option
7:30 PM EST

Dr. Helen McCreery
Dept. of Biology, Tufts University

Problem solving and flexible control in self-organized collectives

ABSTRACT: Across levels of organization—from subcellular processes to massive animal migrations—groups accomplish tasks well beyond what individuals can do. Among the most charismatic examples of this are the accomplishments of ant colonies. Ant colonies perform impressive tasks that are impossible for individual ants. In general, there are many benefits to collective action—e.g. it is typically scalable and robust—but there are also costs associated with collective systems, including high “inertia”, which is thought to result in a loss of flexibility. For example, the positive feedbacks that allow an ant colony to choose among resources may be hard to counteract if the chosen resource disappears. Yet for some tasks, ants rapidly respond to changing conditions. I will discuss the mechanisms of ants’ collective action in two tasks that require extreme flexibility: maze-like obstacle navigation during cooperative transport, and self-assembly of living bridges in army ants.

NOTICE: Welcome to the second CEC meeting of the 2023-2024 academic year! We will be holding hybrid meetings to accommodate COVID-19 precautions and audience members from around the world.

For those able to attend in person, we will have an informal dinner with the speaker at 6:00 pm at the Cambridge Common Restaurant. Our formal meeting runs from 7:30 – 9:00 pm in the Gilbert Room 101A of the Museum of Comparative Zoology (there will be signs to help direct). The meeting will begin with club announcements, followed by a 60-minute presentation by the invited speaker and Q&A. Membership is open to amateur and professional entomologists.

Vince Formica

Tuesday January 9th

MCZ 101, 26 Oxford Street, Harvard University
07:30 PM

Natural selection and social networks in a horned beetle

Vince Formica

Swarthmore College

Bolitotherus cornutus fungus beetle. Photo credit: Stan Malcolm“All of life is social.” This quote by biologist Steven Frank drives home a simple fact about all living organisms: At some point in their lives they interact with members of their own species and those interactions have consequences for their success and ultimately the population’s evolution.

And yet, we still don’t fully understand: how do complex social behaviors evolve in nature? Social network analysis allows us to quantify the behavior of animals at the individual and the emergent, group level.

In this talk I will discuss my work on the evolution of social networks in the forked fungus beetle (Bolitotherus cornutus). Forked fungus beetles are charismatic insects that are found in eastern North American forests, and can live for several years in populations on decaying logs. Most importantly, they exhibit observable social interactions, such as courtship dances and male combat.

Every summer my team of undergraduate students and I track 20 populations of forked fungus beetles in an old-growth forest, mark and release hundreds of individuals, and record tens of thousands of interactions each year. I’ll discuss how the sign and magnitude of sexual selection for social networks is drastically different among populations that are only a few meters from each other. Together we’ll explore how combinations of traits (beetle horns and social network positions) can interact to make complex selective surfaces that could shape the evolution of behavior and morphology.

The talk is free and open to the public. The meeting is readily accessible via public transportation. Parking is available in the Oxford Street Garage with advance arrangement, as described here, or (usually but not always) at spaces on nearby streets. Everyone is also welcome to join us for dinner before the talk (beginning at 5:45 PM) at the Cambridge Common, 1667 Mass Ave., Cambridge.

CEC meetings are held the second Tuesday of the month from October through May. The evening schedule typically includes an informal dinner (5:45 to 7:15 PM) followed by our formal meeting (7:30 – 9:00 PM). The latter begins with club business and is followed by a 50 minute entomology related presentation. Membership is open to amateur and professional entomologists.

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