BRC-BIO: Powering Dynamic Social Networks

Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond LA

Investigators

Abstract

Energy use is at the center of adaptation and evolution. To be successful, individuals must manage their energy expenditure and intake. Foraging with social group mates is one way to ensure foraging success. However, group foraging comes with costs of increased feeding competition. If competition is high, then individuals should choose to forage with others that they have strong, long-lasting, and potentially reciprocal relationships with. This project tests if variability in energy expenditure at the individual and social group level predicts social network relationships. It also explores the likelihood that individuals in a social group will forage together. By tracking the detailed movements of a large bat species that switches between individual and group foraging strategies, this project tests how individuals make social foraging decisions. This project will directly enhance undergraduate biological and computational education. It will also provide targeted training for students historically underrepresented in biological sciences in the United States and Panama. Activities teaching principles of foraging behavior will be developed using the data generated in this project for Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences and outreach. Energy expenditure and energy balance should influence how an individual reacts to changing environments. Energy expenditure may also shape the cohesiveness of social groups. Despite these expectations, we have little predictive information of how individual energy expenditure and balance shape decision-making and relationship within a social group. The goal of this project is to test how variation in energy expenditure among and within individuals impacts cooperative decision-making. By building validated relationships between heart rates, triaxial accelerometry, and foraging behaviors of free-ranging bats in Panama, this project will meet three aims. First, it will generate quantitative individual energy landscapes to measures how the distribution of energy in time and space varies seasonally and across a social group. Second, the project will test how individual energetics reflect the decision-making process to forage cooperatively. Finally, the work will explore how the energetic basis of these decisions reflects social network dynamics. This project develops a tractable study system and machine learning classification pipeline for further exploration of how unrelated individuals cooperate in social groups. It also investigates the fundamental relationships of individuals and groups within a dynamic landscape. The research aims of this project are integrated with undergraduate and graduate student education at Southeastern Louisiana University and in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Through supported, first-hand learning students will integrate field bio-logging of behavior and energy expenditure with computational biology. In addition, engagement materials for 8 – 14-year-old students will be developed in collaboration with a scientific illustrator targeting diversity, ecology, and ecosystem services of bats in Louisiana. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.