Souvik Mandal

Harvard University | Harvard · Department of Molecular and Cell Biology/Center for Brain Science

The solution of complex problems by the collective action of simple agents in both biologically evolved and synthetically engineered systems involves cooperative action. Understanding the resulting emergent solutions requires integrating across the organismal behaviors of many individuals. Here we investigate an ecologically relevant collective tas...

The solution of complex problems by the collective action of simple agents in both biologically evolved and synthetically engineered systems involves cooperative action. Understanding the resulting emergent solutions requires integrating across the organismal behaviors of many individuals. Here we investigate an ecologically relevant collective tas...

Dispersing from the natal nest to found new nests is an avenue for gaining direct fitness for workers in some primitively eusocial insects, especially in species with a perennial nesting cycle where males are present throughout the year. Such nest foundation is difficult to study in nature or in small laboratory cages. Hence, we have investigated t...

Desert ants and honey bees start foraging when they are few days old, and subsequently increase their foraging effort and the amount of foraged food. This could be an optimal strategy for scavenger/gatherer animals inhabiting less-featured landscapes. Animals inhabiting cluttered landscapes, especially predatory ones, however, may need substantial...

Performing efficient homing, i.e., returning to a previously known place, is crucial for the survival of any motile animal. Animals perform homing across different spatial scales and environments, employing various mechanisms with the aid of different sensorimotor systems molded by their varied evolutionary histories and ecological constraints. Des...

Possessing spatial familiarity with their foraging landscape may enable animals to reduce foraging effort without compromising on foraging benefits. For animals inhabiting feature-rich landscapes, spatial familiarity can increase with increasing age/experience. To check whether this holds for individually foraging tropical social wasp Ropalidia mar...

In primitively eusocial insects, many individuals function as workers despite being capable of independent reproduction. Such altruistic behaviour is usually explained by the argument that workers gain indirect fitness by helping close genetic relatives. The focus on indirect fitness has left open the question of whether workers are also capable of...

The defence of a society often requires that some specialized members coordinate to repel a threat at personal risk. This is especially true for honey bee guards, which defend the hive and may sacrifice their lives upon stinging. Central to this cooperative defensive response is the sting alarm pheromone, which has isoamyl acetate (IAA) as its main...

Insect societies are hallmarks of cooperation because one or a few queens monopolize reproduction and several non-reproductive workers cooperatively raise brood. However, the loss of the queen exposes a colony to potential reproductive conflict, which is resolved only after a new queen takes over. We studied queen succession in natural and experime...

Significance Cooperation and division of labor are two important features of eusocial insects such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites. Using the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata , we investigated the minimum requirements for the emergence of cooperation and division of labor, both reproductive and nonreproductive, and their effect on p...

We captured foragers of the tropical social wasp Ropalidia marginata from their nests and displaced them at different distances and directions. Wasps displaced within their probable foraging grounds returned to their nests on the day of release although they oriented randomly upon release; however, wasps fed before release returned sooner, displayi...

Compared to our extensive knowledge about the navigation and homing abilities of ants and bees, we know rather little about these phenomena in social wasps. Here, we report the homing abilities of the tropical primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata and the factors that affect their homing success. To determine from how far these wasps can re...