The research in the lab is guided by our overarching interest in the evolution of social behavior and how inter-individual variation contributes to this process. Individuals within any group are not the same in terms of their abilities and understanding this variability and its impact is crucial for insights into the processes that guide the dynamics of social living. The ecological success of social groups is often attributed to the diversity of individuals within them but the effects of diversity are more complex than what is routinely assumed – there are additive, non-additive and frequency dependent effects which makes it non-trivial to predict the outcomes of diversity.
Understanding the genetic, environmental and developmental causes that through gene x environment interactions drive diversity or the interindividual variation in behavior, and the evolutionary consequences of this variation help us understand the cooperation and conflict that characterize social life and shape the life history of social animals. Borrowing ideas from a variety of theoretical frameworks such as Pace of Life and Behavioral Syndromes, Optimal Foraging Theory, Nutritional Geometry, Foraging and Social Brain hypotheses, Social Network theory, Life history theory, etc., we focus our interests on interindividual differences in metabolic and cognitive capacities as these two arguably are the most fundamental mechanisms that define an individul’s performance. We use honeybees as an experimental model to test these ideas as they are ideal to explore a large number of these processes and patterns at both the individual and the group/social level. We try to answer these kinds of questions using a mix of experimental work in behavior, physiology, genetics and theoretical pursuits based on individual based modeling. We have also recently expanded our inquiries on these topics by starting some comparative work with tropical honeybees.
Browsing through our recent publications is a good way of figuring out the kind of things that we’re currently doing in the lab.`