Research Interests

EMERGENCE, SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND BEHAVIOR

I seek to address longstanding evolutionary questions using eusocial insects as a study system. The overarching purpose of my research is to explain how complex adaptive systems (e.g. eusocial colonies) emerge from the interaction of simpler entities (e.g. individuals and their genes), and reveal mechanisms underlying the origins of alternative phenotypes (e.g. worker/queen polyphenism). I have interests in a variety of molecular approaches relevant to addressing the origins of eusociality, including epigenomics, functional genomics (e.g. mRNAi, CRISPR/Cas9), transcriptomics, comparative genomics, and phylogenomics.

My past research focused on the systematics of Vespidae, a group of wasps comprised of solitary, subsocial, presocial, primitively eusocial and highly eusocial species. Reconstructing the evolutionary history of these wasps reveals key insights into how social societies emerged. My study found that eusociality evolved twice within the vespid wasps; once in hover wasps and once in the common ancestor of paper wasps, yellowjackets and hornets. Ancestral state reconstructions, which estimate the traits exhibited by an ancient ancestor, suggest that the most recent common ancestor of paper wasps, yellowjackets and hornets had concurrently evolved nest-sharing, cooperative brood care, and distinct developmental trajectories for putative workers and queens.

My ongoing research is focused on discovering the genetic basis of parental provisioning and offspring solicitation in the clonal raider ant Ooceraea biroi. Despite brood care being at the heart of eusocial origins and the primary function of a eusocial colony, much remains to be discovered regarding the mechanisms by which offspring signal need to their caregivers in eusocial insects. The behaviors of parents and their offspring are intimately linked, and genes expressed in one can influence what genes are expressed in the other. For example, the level of parental provisioning is influenced by genes expressed in the caregiver and its brood, and offspring solicitation is influenced by genes expressed in the offspring and their caregivers. Despite this simple fact, studies of parental care in both vertebrates and invertebrates have generally focused only on the genetic basis of the caregiver’s behavior, ignoring the role that genes in offspring play in shaping parental care.