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Participating Faculty |
Selected Papers
Graduate Programs and Recommended Coursework
Useful Internet Links
Insects are among the earliest terrestrial animals and in most terrestrial ecosystems
they are the most abundant species with the greatest biodiversity. Although there are nearly one million insect species
known to science, their total number is believed to be between 2 and 10 million. Only about three percent of these
live in tightly organized societies, yet these social insects make up approximately 75 % of the entire insect biomass
and about 30 % of the entire animal biomass. The dominant role of social insects in terrestrial ecology and their
astounding evolutionary success is based on remarkable systems of division of labor involving often hundreds and
thousands of individual organisms. Such cooperative organizations can only work by means of communication.
The School of Life Sciences (SOLS) at Arizona State University offers graduate
researchers the opportunity for multidisciplinary training in neuroethology, sensory physiology, and behavioral
endocrinology, as well as behavioral genetics, sociogenetics, behavioral ecology, and sociobiology, using
insects as model systems. Current research emphases entail the understanding of the genetic, neurobiological,
and physiological foundations of social behavior, and the analysis of behavioral mechanisms of the communication
systems by which cooperative interactions, division of labor , and collective decision making among hundreds or
thousands of individuals is regulated. We are also interested in understanding the evolutionary interplay of
cooperation and conflict in insect societies, and the analyses of foraging strategies, competition, territorial
tactics, learning, and orientation. Furthermore we investigate life cycle patterns, sexual selection and
reproduction, the evolution of sociality in insects, behavior-ecological mechanisms of speciation, and
molecular phylogenetics. Most of us work with eusocial insects, however, there are also research programs
on presocial and solitary insects, focusing on the neurobiology of motor patterns, sensory physiology,
color signals and cues in lepidopteran species, reproductive strategies, and sexual selection.
Graduate students and postdoctoral associates will have opportunities to participate
in a highly interactive research community and will be exposed to cutting-edge techniques. Extended interactions with
the members of the interdisciplinary Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity (CSDC) at SOLS will provide ample
opportunity to explore current theory and modeling techniques.
PARTICIPATING FACULTY AND THEIR RESERACH TOPICS
- John Alcock -- Evolution of reproductive behavior; sexual selection
- Gro Amdam -- Physiological and genetic dispositions affecting division of labor in social insects
- Sharon Crook -- Computational neuroscience; genomics and neuroinformatics
- Betty Davidson -- Insect pathologist; microbial control agents for mosquitoes and whiteflies; diseases of amphibians associated with amphibian decline; pathogens that may be useful for biological control of invasive crayfish
- Carsten Duch -- Developmental neurobiology in Drosophila and social insect species
- Jennifer Fewell -- Division of labor in honeybees and ants; sociogenesis and modeling of division of labor systems; caste determination
- Juergen Gadau -- Sociogenetics and population genetics of insect societies; genetics of caste development; speciation
- Jon Harrison -- Ecological physiology and energetics in insects, particularly in social insects
- Bert Hoelldobler -- Communication in ant societies; chemical signals regulating division of labor; territorial strategies; conflict resolutions; life cycle studies
- Robert Johnson -- Systematics, faunistics, ecology of ant communities
- Juergen Liebig -- Organizations of primitive ant societies; fertility signals; Division of labor in primitive and advanced insect societies; modeling of patterns of social evolution
- Robert Page -- Genetics physiology and evolution of division of labor in honey bees; genetics of reproductive behavior; genetics of caste and sex determination
- David Pearson -- Using tiger beetles as a test organism, spatial modeling of continental species distribution patterns, conservation biology, environmental education, tropical rain forests, and ecotourism; South America, West Africa and Madagascar to India, Thailand and New Guinea
- Stephen Pratt -- Collective decision making in social insects; patterns of self organizations and emergent properties
- Ronald Rutowski -- Vision, visual signals and reproductive behavior in insects
- Brian Smith -- Sensory and neurophysiology of chemical communication in Social insects, mainly honey bees; learning in social insects; behavior and neurobiology; neuroethology of social insects
- William Tyler -- Sensory physiology; synaptic plasticity
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SELECTED PAPERS
- Alexander Kaiser, C. Jaco Klok, J. Jake Socha, Wah-Keat Lee, Michael C. Quinlan, Jon F. Harrison. 2007. Increase in tracheal investment with beetle size supports hypothesis of oxygen limitation on insect gigantism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104:13198-13203.
- Socha, J.J., Westneat, M.W., Harrison, J.F., Waters, J.S., and Lee, W.K. 2007. Real-time phase-contrast x-ray imaging, a new technique for the study of animal form and function. BMC Biology 5:6.
- Greenlee, K.J., C. Nebeker and J.F. Harrison. 2007. Body size-independent safety margins for gas exchange across grasshopper species. Journal of Experimental Biology 210:1288-1296.
- Harrison, J.F., Jennifer Fewell, Kirk E. Anderson, and Gerald M. Loper. 2006. Environmental Physiology of the Invasion of the Americas by Africanized Honey Bees. Integrative and Comparative Biology 46:1110-1122.
- Harrison, J.F., M.R. Frazier, J.R. Henry, A. Kaiser, C.J. Klok, B. Rascón. 2006. Responses of terrestrial insects to hypoxia or hyperoxia. Respiratory Physiology and Neurobiology 154:4-17.
- Kemp, D., and R. L. Rutowski. 2007. Condition dependence, quantitative genetics, and potential information content of iridescent ultraviolet butterfly coloration. Evolution 61: 169-183.
- Rutowski, R. L., J. M. Macedonia, J. W. Merry, N. Morehouse, K. Yturralde, L. Taylor-Taft, D. Gaalema, D. J. Kemp, and R. S. Papke. 2007. Iridescent ultraviolet signaling in the Orange Sulphur butterfly (Colias eurytheme): Spatial, temporal, and spectral properties. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 90: 349-364.
- Hunt, J.H., Kensinger, B.J., Kossuth, J.A., Henshaw, M.T., Norberg, K. Wolschin, F. and Amdam G.V. 2007 A diapause pathway underlies the gyne phenotype in Polistes wasps, revealing an evolutionary route to caste-containing insect societies. In press, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
- Patel, A., Fondrk, K.F., Kaftanoglu O., Emore, C., Hunt, G. Frederick, K. and Amdam, G.A. 2007 The making of a queen: TOR pathway is a key player in diphenic caste development. PLoS ONE 6, e509
- Alcock, J. 2005. Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach. Eighth edition. Sinauer Associates. Sunderland , Mass. 640 pp.
- Fewell, J.H. 2003. Social Insect Networks. Science. 301:1867-1870.
- Qi, W and S Crook. 2004. Tools for neuroinformatic data exchange: An XML application for neuronal morphology data. Neurocomputing 58-60:1091-1095.
- Evers JF, Muench D, Duch C (2006) Developmental relocation of presynaptic terminals along distinct types of dendritic filopodia. Dev Biol May 19; [Epub ahead of print].
- Anderson KE, Hölldobler B, Fewell JH., Mott BM, Gadau J 2006 Population wide lineage frequencies predict genetic load in the seed harvester ant Pogonomyrmex. PNAS, 103: 13433-13438.
- Gadau J, Page REJr., Werren JH (2002). The genetic basis of the interspecific differences in wing size in Nasonia (Hymenoptea; Pteromalidae) - major QTL and epistasis. Genetics 161: 673-684.
- Wilfert L, Gadau J, Schmid-Hempel P 2007 The genetic architecture of immune defense and reproduction in male Bombus terrestris bumblebees. Evolution 61: 804-815.
- Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson, 1990, THE ANTS, Harvard University Press, (Cambridge MA, London UK), pp 732
- Reeve HK, Hoelldobler B 2007 The emergence of a superorganism through intergroup competition Proc. Natl. Acad Sci USA 104: 9736-9740.
- Endler A, Liebig J, Schmitt T, Parker JE, Jones GR, Schreier P, Hölldobler B, 2004. Surface hydrocarbons of queen eggs regulate worker reproduction in a social insect. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101:2945-2950.
- Page RE Jr, Amdam GV 2007 The making of a social insect: developmental architectures of social design. Bioessays 29: 334-343.
- Pratt, S.C. and Sumpter, D.J.T. 2006 A tuneable algorithm for collective decision-making. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103: 15906-15910
- Pratt, S.C., Sumpter, D.J.T., Mallon, E.B. and Franks, N.R. 2005 An agent-based model of collective nest choice by the ant Temnothorax albipennis. Animal Behaviour 70: 1023- 1036.
- Pratt, S.C. 2005 Quorum sensing by encounter rates in the ant Temnothorax albipennis. Behavioral Ecology 16: 488-496.
- Latshaw JS, Smith BH 2005 Heritable variation in learning performance affects foraging preferences in the honey bee (Apis mellifera) Behavioral Ecology Sociobiology 58: 200-207.
- Li, Z., J. Burrone, W.J. Tyler, K.N. Hartman, D.F. Albeanu, V.N. Murthy 2005. Synaptic vesicle Recycling studied in transgenic mice expressing synaptopHluorin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102, 6131-6136.
- Pearson, David L. and Alfried P. Vogler. 2001. Tiger Beetles: The Evolution, Ecology, and Diversity of the Cicindelids. Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, NY, 333 pp.
- Davidson, E.W. 2006. Big Fleas Have Little Fleas; how diseases of invertebrate animals are important to mankind. 200 pgs. University of Arizona Press.
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GRADUATE PROGRAMS AND RECOMMENDED COURSEWORK
Graduate Programs:
PhD and MS in Biology
PhD and MS in Molecular and Cellular Biology
Graduate Programs outside of SOLS:
PhD in Neuroscience
Regular Seminar (offered every semester)
BIO 591 -- Current Issues in Social Insect Research
Graduate Seminars (offered every other year; 1 hr)
BIO 591 -- Sociobiology of Ants (Juergen Gadau, Juergen Liebig, Bert Hoelldobler)
BIO 591 -- Taxonomy and Natural History of Arizona Ants (Robert A. Johnson)
BIO 591 -- Life History Theory and Social Insects (Robert A. Johnson)
BIO 591 -- Insect Neuroscience (Brian Smith, Carsten Duch)
Planned Courses
* The Other Insect and Vertebrate Societies (Jennifer Fewell)
* Insect Communication (Bert Hoelldobler, Juergen Liebig)
* Modeling Behavior (Stephen Pratt, Bill Griffin)
* Insect Physiology (Jon Harrison, Gro Amdam)
* Insect Behavior and Ecology (Juergen Liebig, Jon Alcock, Ron Rutowski)
* Genetic Analyses of Insects (Juergen Gadau, Gro Amdam, Robert Page)
Additionl Courses
BIO 386 -- Introduction to Entomology
BIO 406 -- Computer Applications in Biology
BIO 415 -- Biometry
BIO 423 -- Population and Community Ecology
BIO 424 -- Mathematical Models in Ecology
BIO 425 -- Animal Ecology
BIO 435 -- Research Techniques in Animal Behavior
BIO 453 -- Animal Histology
BIO 465 -- Neurophysiology
BIO 466 -- Neurophysiology Laboratory
BIO 494 -- Sociobiology
BIO 522 -- Populations: Evolutionary Ecology
BIO 543 -- Molecular Genetics
BIO 545 -- Populations: Evolutionary Genetics
BIO 547 -- Techniques in Evolutionary Genetics
BIO 552 -- Developmental Genetics
BIO 560 -- Comparative Physiology
BIO 566 -- Environmental Physiology
BIO 569 -- Cellular Physiology
BIO 567 -- Neuroscience: Molecules to Behavior
BIO 569 -- Computational Neuroscience
BIO 583 -- OTS: Fieldwork in Tropical Biology
BIO 598 -- Behavioral Neuroendocrinology
BIO 591 -- Advanced Animal Behavior
BIO 591 -- Applications in Behavioral Ecology to Conservation Biology
MAT 502 -- Neural Modeling
MAT 503 -- Mathematical Cell Physiology
MCB 540 -- Functional Genomics
MCB 555 and 5562 -- Advanced Molecular and Cellular Biology I and II
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WEBSITE LINKS
Lab Webpages
Harrison Lab
Tyler Lab
Pratt Lab
Dornhaus Lab (University of Arizona, Tucson)
External Web Links
Animal Behavior Society
International Society for Behavioral Ecology
SOLS Social Insect Research Group website (including external links)
Neuroscience at ASU
Center for Insect Science
Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity
The best social insect pictures on the web, by Alex Wild
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