シロアリの群れ行動の進化について

水元惟暁（沖縄科学技術大学院大学）

2023年7月5日　15:00~

京都大学農学部1階E-103号室 

   Group-living animals coordinate their movement while migrating as a group. Tandem running in termites is the simplest movement coordination that involves leader–follower relationships. Unlike ants, a tandem run of termites is performed by mating pairs while seeking sites for colony foundation. In Neoisopteran termites, the leader role is fixed in females in heterosexual pairing, and movement coordination is achieved through adjusting movement speed to the distance to each other. In this talk, I will present how such a fixed leader-follower relationship during tandem runs evolved and what understanding simple tandem runs can tell about the complex collective motion of a large group. First, I will show the results of extensive movement analysis of termite tandem runs to highlight its flexibility in leader-follower roles. Second, my approach of a systematic literature survey and phylogenetic comparative analysis suggests the evolutionary history of termite tandem runs with their ancestral state. Finally, I present the results of several ongoing projects to quantify movement coordination across diverse species. By integrating computational behavioral analysis and phylogenetic comparative methods, I envision tracing the evolutionary origin of complex termite collective behavior.