About This Project

In an ant colony, workers perform different tasks to promote the growth and maintenance of the colony without any centralized leader. How do these seemingly simple, tiny creatures display such incredible variation in behavior? What compels them to perform a particular task versus another? My research explores the peripheral and central nervous systems of ants to explain how basic physiological differences can make similar individuals act differently.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

To understand how inter-individual differences in the central and peripheral nervous systems contribute to behavioral variation among worker ants in a colony.

What is the significance of this project?

How the peripheral and central nervous systems collectively contribute to "personalities" among animals is not fully understood. My research uses an organism with a relatively simple nervous system to provide insight into how fundamental differences in central and peripheral neural processes can give rise to significant differences in behavior. Further, my work provides a unique, integrative perspective on how variation in neural physiology at the individual level can give rise to colony-level division of labor. Ultimately, this information can also shed light on how natural selection has targeted individual neural variation to give rise to the successful, stable task allocation mechanisms of social insect societies.

What are the goals of the project?

Funds will be used to purchase antibodies for synapse immunolabeling (to study synaptic density in sensory input and processing regions of the brain) and the use of my university's confocal and scanning electron microscope (to characterize peripheral sensitivity and visualize neuroanatomy of ants). Materials for electroantennograms (to assess peripheral sensitivity), brain dissections and slide preparation will also be purchased with the requested funding.