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How do social insect colonies organize groups of individuals to achieve coordinated collective defense? We explore this topic in terms of division of labor and allocation, morphological worker sub-castes, metabolism, and variation in worker neural architecture. These empirical data have also been utilized for bio-inspired design.
To learn more, check out these publications: Robinson & Baudier 2025 J Insect Behav 38:23 Robinson et al. 2025 Insect Soc. (in press) Navas-Zuloaga et al. 2023. J Math Biol. 87 Baudier et al. 2022. J Comp Neurol. 530:672-682 Bennett & Baudier. 2021. J Insect Behav. 34:162-172 Baudier & Pavlic. 2020. Myrmecological News. 30:251-258 Baudier et al. 2020. Behav Ecol Sociobiol. 74:125 Baudier et al. 2019. Behav Ecol. 30:1041-1049 Strickland et al. 2018. DARS. 9:139-151 Ostwald et al. 2018. J Insect Behav. 31:503–509 |
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Individual physiologies construct group adaptation in social species. A major area of ongoing research in our lab is the study of how the thermal performance and desiccation resistance of social insects scales from individual to group, and across space and time relative to local climate. We are interested in improving our understanding of the selective pressures of microclimate, elevation, rain shadows, and sociality in shaping phenotypes. This work improves our understanding of the underpinnings of species distributions across landscapes, and of how climate change impacts social species. Our publications on this topic include:
Robinson & Baudier 2024. Front Ecol Evol. 12:1405459 Johnson et al. 2024. Carib Nat. 96:1-8 O'Donnell & Baudier 2023. Ecol Entomol. 48:622-626 Ostwald et al. 2023. J Comp Biol Phyiol B. 193:261-269 Baudier et al. 2022. Physiol Biochem Zool. 95:379-389 Baudier & O'Donnell. 2020. Biotropica. 52:113-119 Welch et al. 2020. Insect Soc. 67: 213-219 Baudier et al. 2018. Am Nat. 192:347-359 Baudier & O’Donnell. 2018. J Therm Biol. 78:277-280 Baudier & O’Donnell. 2017. Curr Opin Insect Sci. 22:85-91 Baudier & O’Donnell. 2016. Insect Soc. 63:467-476 Baudier et al. 2015. J Anim Ecol. 84:1322-1330 |
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Neotropical army ant bivouacs are temporary nests constructed from hundreds of thousands of living ants that coordinately cling to one another as they collectively cradle and incubate the queen and brood. Our work is to revise and refine our understanding of how army ant bivouacs construct, thermoregulate, and how their discarded waste influences the ecosystem around them. Below are our lab's publications on this topic:
Robles López KY et al. 2024. Biotropica 56: 58-70 Baudier & Pavlic. 2022. Artificial Life and Robotics. 27:308–315 Baudier et al. 2019. Ecography. 42:730-739. Baudier. 2019. In Encyclopedia of Social Insects. Baudier & O’Donnell. 2016. Insect Soc. 63:467-476 |