School of Biological Sciences, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK.
Proc Biol Sci. 2010 Jun 7;277(1688):1651-7. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1876. Epub 2010 Feb 3.
Reports of substantial clonal mixing measured in social aphid colonies seem, on the face of it, to rule out population structure as an explanation of this enigmatic insect's social behaviour. To clarify how selection operates in aphids, and to disentangle direct and indirect fitness components, we present a model of the life cycle of a typical colony-dwelling aphid. The model incorporates ecological factors and includes a trade-off between investing in social behaviour and investing in reproduction. Our focus on inclusive fitness contrasts with previous approaches that optimize colony output. Through deriving a variant of Hamilton's rule, we show that a simple relationship can be established between the patch-carrying capacity and immigration rates into patches. Our results indicate that the levels of clonal mixing reported are not inconsistent with social behaviour. We discuss our model in terms of the evolutionary origins of social behaviour in aphids.
在社会性蚜虫群体中测量到的大量克隆混合的报告，表面上似乎排除了群体结构作为这种神秘昆虫社会行为的解释。为了阐明选择在蚜虫中是如何起作用的，并理清直接和间接适应度成分，我们提出了一个典型的居住在群体中的蚜虫的生命周期模型。该模型纳入了生态因素，并包括了在社会行为和繁殖方面的投资之间的权衡。我们对适合度的关注与以前优化群体产出的方法形成了对比。通过推导出汉密尔顿规则的一个变体，我们表明可以在斑块携带能力和进入斑块的移民率之间建立一个简单的关系。我们的结果表明，报告的克隆混合水平与社会行为并不矛盾。我们根据蚜虫社会行为的进化起源来讨论我们的模型。
