Johnson Brian R, van Wilgenburg Ellen, Tsutsui Neil D
Behav Ecol Sociobiol. 2011 May;65(5):935-944. doi: 10.1007/s00265-010-1094-x. Epub 2010 Nov 19.
Social insects rank among the most abundant and influential terrestrial organisms. The key to their success is their ability to form tightly knit social groups that perform work cooperatively, and effectively exclude non-members from the colony. An extensive body of research, both empirical and theoretical, has explored how optimal acceptance thresholds could evolve in individuals, driven by the twin costs of inappropriately rejecting true nestmates and erroneously accepting individuals from foreign colonies. Here, in contrast, we use agent-based modeling to show that strong nestmate recognition by individuals is often unnecessary. Instead, highly effective nestmate recognition can arise as a colony-level property from a collective of individually poor recognizers. Essentially, although an intruder can get by one defender when their odor cues are similar, it is nearly impossible to get past many defenders if there is the slightest difference in cues. The results of our models match observed rejection rates in studies of ants, wasps, and bees. We also show that previous research in support of the optimal threshold theory approach to the problem of nestmate recognition can be alternatively viewed as evidence in favor of the collective formation of a selectively permeable barrier that allows in nestmates (at a significant cost) while rejecting non-nestmates. Finally, this work shows that nestmate recognition has a stronger task allocation component than previously thought, as colonies can nearly always achieve perfect nestmate recognition if it is cost effective for them to do so at the colony level. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00265-010-1094-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
群居昆虫是最为丰富且具影响力的陆地生物之一。它们成功的关键在于能够形成紧密团结的社会群体，这些群体协同工作，并有效地将非群体成员排除在蚁群之外。大量的实证和理论研究探讨了在不适当拒绝真正的巢伴和错误接受外来蚁群个体这两种成本的驱动下，个体如何演化出最优的接受阈值。相比之下，我们在此使用基于主体的建模方法来表明，个体对巢伴的强烈识别往往并非必要。相反，高度有效的巢伴识别可以作为一种群体层面的特性，从一群个体识别能力较差的个体集合中产生。从本质上讲，尽管当入侵者与防御者的气味线索相似时，它可能骗过一个防御者，但如果线索存在哪怕最细微的差异，它几乎不可能骗过多个防御者。我们模型的结果与在蚂蚁、黄蜂和蜜蜂研究中观察到的拒绝率相匹配。我们还表明，先前支持将最优阈值理论用于巢伴识别问题的研究，也可以被视为有利于选择性渗透屏障集体形成的证据，该屏障允许巢伴进入（要付出巨大代价），同时拒绝非巢伴。最后，这项研究表明，巢伴识别的任务分配成分比之前认为的更强，因为如果在群体层面这样做具有成本效益，蚁群几乎总能实现完美的巢伴识别。电子补充材料：本文的在线版本（doi:10.1007/s00265-010-1094-x）包含补充材料，授权用户可以获取。
