Undergraduate Research: An Archive - 2021 Program
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Asia Kaiser ’21<br />
ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY<br />
Senior Thesis <strong>Research</strong> Funding Awardee<br />
BIODIVERSITY AND<br />
CONSERVATION<br />
THESIS TITLE<br />
Social Behavior in Two<br />
American Sweat Bees<br />
ADVISER<br />
Sarah Kocher,<br />
Assistant Professor of<br />
Ecology and<br />
Evolutionary Biology<br />
and the Lewis-Sigler<br />
Institute for Integrative<br />
Genomics<br />
The Halictidae (sweat bee) family contains<br />
some of the greatest variety of social behavior in<br />
insects across the globe, making it an excellent<br />
model clade for comparative behavioral research.<br />
My study aimed to characterize social behavior<br />
differences between two closely related halictid<br />
species: the solitary Augochlora pura, and the<br />
facultatively eusocial Augochlorella aurata. My<br />
hypotheses were that these bees would exhibit<br />
different conspecific social behaviors — between<br />
strangers and familiar individuals — with<br />
the solitary A. pura being more avoidant and<br />
aggressive overall, and the social A. aurata being<br />
more tolerant. My results showed that these<br />
two species do display different social patterns,<br />
with the social species being unexpectedly more<br />
spatially avoidant than the solitary species.<br />
Comparative studies of this kind can complement<br />
research in other fields such as sociogenomics by<br />
showing the specific social-behavior variations<br />
that can result from genetic and physiological<br />
differences.<br />
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