Multi-level selection and the evolution of animal family life

Supervisor: Prof Rebecca Kilner

Co-Supervisor: Dr James Herbert-Read

Does selection act on genes, individuals or groups? You will use a novel experimental approach to address this major outstanding question.  

The evolution of family life is currently explained by considering how selection acts on the selfish interests of individual family members (and the genes within them). Far less is known about whether selection can act on pairs, or on the family as a unit. Yet there is growing evidence from diverse taxa that group level activities are adaptive, for example: in the construction of nests or burrows; in the collective defence of key resources; or the collective capacity to exploit resources that are otherwise unobtainable. We have obtained preliminary evidence that selection acts in a similar way on the joint behaviour of pairs and the collective behaviour of the family as a whole.

You will focus on a common UK woodland insect: the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. Burying beetles use small vertebrate carrion for reproduction, which they convert into an edible nest for their young. Burying beetle parents stay with the nest and larvae, to feed them and defend them. Carrion is scarce, and N. vespilloides can face intense competition from congenerics and conspecifics. You will test whether competition from rivals imposes selection on pairs to work effectively to conceal the carrion nest, and on families to deplete the carrion resource rapidly.

Your work will build on answering these questions:
What kinds of activities might be coordinated at these higher levels (and which are not), and how? Does the extent of coordination differ between populations? What are the evolutionary consequences of such precision coordination among individuals?

References

Duarte, A. et al 2021. Evolutionary change in the construction of the nursery environment when parents are prevented from caring for their young. Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences USA 118: e2102450118. doi/10.1073/pnas.2102450118

Jarrett, B. J. M. et al. 2022 Multilevel selection leads to divergent coadaptation of care-giving parents during pre-hatching parental care. BioRxiv 2022.05.23.493134

Scott, M. P. 1998 The ecology and evolution of burying beetles. Annual Review of Entomology vol. 43 pp 595-618 doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ento.43.1.595