Harnessing natural variation to study the evolution of social behavior

Natural variation can provide powerful insights into the genetic and environmental factors shaping the origins and evolution of complex traits. Sweat bees harbor extraordinary variation in social behavior within and between species. Throughout their evolutionary history, these bees have repeatedly gained and lost sociality, resulting in many closely related yet behaviorally variable species. Building on the wealth of natural history data for this system, my lab has developed complementary genomic and experimental resources to identify the molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying variation in social behavior. We have discovered changes in hormone signaling, sensory systems, and neural processes that are tightly associated with the gains and losses of sociality. We have also taken a theoretical approach to identify several key environmental factors that shape social evolution. Taken together, this work broadens our understanding of social behavior across scales, from the molecular building blocks of the ‘social brain’ to the ecological and evolutionary forces that drive social evolution.

Speaker: Sarah Kocher, Princeton University