Drivers of larval gregariousness in Lepidoptera

Gregarious behaviour has evolved many times in a wide range of animals. The prevalence of
gregariousness poses many interesting evolutionary questions; For example, how is the conflict
between competition and cooperation balanced? What are the advantages of social behaviour? And
what are the costs? But it also leads to many mechanistic questions; how do animals sense each other?
How do they track each other's behaviour?
This project aims to tackle these questions using Heliconiini, a diverse tribe of Neotropical butterflies,
as a study system. Gregarious larval behaviour has evolved in multiple independent lineages, and in
some cases closely related species differ dramatically in egg laying and larval behaviour. The primary
goals of the project are to:
i) Develop protocols to accurately quantify gregarious behaviour across species and larval
stages.
ii) Conduct comparative analyses to explore the interactions between gregarious behaviour,
colouration, predator avoidance, and host plant morphology.
iii) Perform experiments to establish what sensory cues gregarious species use to maintain group
cohesion.
iv) Use available comparative genomics and new neurotranscriptomic data to identify candidate
genes that may contribute to larval behaviour.