Kerr Natalie Z, Malfi Rosemary L, Williams Neal M, Crone Elizabeth E
Department of Biology Tufts University Medford MA USA.
Department of Biology Duke University Durham NC USA.
Ecol Evol. 2021 Feb 11;11(6):2814-2827. doi: 10.1002/ece3.7239. eCollection 2021 Mar.
Behavior and organization of social groups is thought to be vital to the functioning of societies, yet the contributions of various roles within social groups toward population growth and dynamics have been difficult to quantify. A common approach to quantifying these role-based contributions is evaluating the number of individuals conducting certain roles, which ignores how behavior might scale up to effects at the population-level. Manipulative experiments are another common approach to determine population-level effects, but they often ignore potential feedbacks associated with these various roles.Here, we evaluate the effects of worker size distribution in bumblebee colonies on worker production in 24 observational colonies across three environments, using functional linear models. Functional linear models are an underused correlative technique that has been used to assess lag effects of environmental drivers on plant performance. We demonstrate potential applications of this technique for exploring high-dimensional ecological systems, such as the contributions of individuals with different traits to colony dynamics.We found that more larger workers had mostly positive effects and more smaller workers had negative effects on worker production. Most of these effects were only detected under low or fluctuating resource environments suggesting that the advantage of colonies with larger-bodied workers becomes more apparent under stressful conditions.We also demonstrate the wider ecological application of functional linear models. We highlight the advantages and limitations when considering these models, and how they are a valuable complement to many of these performance-based and manipulative experiments.
社会群体的行为和组织被认为对社会的运转至关重要，然而社会群体中各种角色对种群增长和动态变化的贡献却难以量化。一种量化这些基于角色的贡献的常见方法是评估履行特定角色的个体数量，这忽略了行为如何在种群层面上扩大影响。操纵性实验是另一种确定种群层面影响的常见方法，但它们往往忽略了与这些不同角色相关的潜在反馈。在此，我们使用功能线性模型，评估了三种环境下24个观察蜂群中熊蜂蜂群工蜂大小分布对工蜂产出的影响。功能线性模型是一种未被充分利用的相关技术，已被用于评估环境驱动因素对植物性能的滞后影响。我们展示了该技术在探索高维生态系统方面的潜在应用，例如具有不同特征的个体对蜂群动态变化的贡献。我们发现，较多的大工蜂对工蜂产出大多有积极影响，而较多的小工蜂则有负面影响。这些影响大多仅在低资源或波动资源环境下被检测到，这表明在压力条件下，拥有体型较大工蜂的蜂群优势更为明显。我们还展示了功能线性模型更广泛的生态应用。我们强调了在考虑这些模型时的优势和局限性以及它们如何成为许多基于性能和操纵性实验的有价值补充。
