补充碳水化合物对群居昆虫子代数量、大小和品质的影响

Resource availability can determine an organism’s investment strategies for growth and reproduction. When nutrients are limited, there are potential tradeoffs between investing into offspring number versus individual offspring size. In social insects, colony investment in offspring size and number may shift in response to colony needs and the availability of food resources. We experimentally manipulated the diet of a polymorphic ant species (Solenopsis invicta) to test how access to the carbohydrate and amino acid components of nectar resources affect colony investment in worker number, body size, size distributions, and individual percent fat mass. We reared field-collected colonies on one of four macronutrient treatment supplements: water, amino acids, carbohydrates, and amino acid and carbohydrates. Having access to carbohydrates nearly doubled colony biomass after 60 days. This increase in biomass resulted from an increase in worker number and mean worker size. Access to carbohydrates also altered worker body size distributions. Finally, we found a negative relationship between worker number and size, suggesting a tradeoff in colony investment strategies. This tradeoff was more pronounced for colonies without access to carbohydrate resources. The monopolization of plant-based resources has been implicated in the ecological success of ants. Our results shed light on a possible mechanism for this success, and also have implications for the success of introduced species. In addition to increases in colony size, our results suggest that having access to plant-based carbohydrates can also result in larger workers that may have better individual fighting ability, and that can withstand greater temperature fluctuations and periods of food deprivation.

资源（食物）的可获得性可以决定有机体生长和繁殖的投资策略。当营养有限时，（动物）在投资于后代数量和个体后代大小之间存在潜在的权衡。在社会性昆虫中，对后代大小和数量的群体投资可能会随着群体需求和食物资源的可获得性而改变。我们通过实验操控了一种多态蚂蚁物种(Solenopsis Invicta)的饮食，以测试花蜜资源中的碳水化合物和氨基酸成分获取对工蚁数量、身体大小、（身体）大小的分布和个体脂肪百分比质量这些方面的群体投资有何影响。我们使用四种常量营养素处理补充剂中的一种上饲养野外采集的蚂蚁社群：水；氨基酸；碳水化合物；氨基酸和碳水化合物。获得碳水化合物后，60天后蚂蚁群体的生物量几乎翻了一番。生物量的增加是由于工蚁数量和工蚁平均大小的增加。摄入碳水化合物也改变了工蚁的体型（大小）分布。最后，我们发现工蚁数量和大小之间存在负相关关系，这表明群体投资策略是一种权衡。对于不能获得碳水化合物资源的群体来说，这种权衡更为明显。植物资源的垄断与蚂蚁的生态成功有关。我们的结果阐明了这一成功的一种可能机制，也对外来种的成功具有启示意义。除了群体规模的增加，我们的结果表明，获得植物性碳水化合物还可以产生更大的工蚁，这些工蚁可能具有更好的个人战斗能力，并且能够承受更大的温度波动和食物匮乏的时期。

Colony 不太好翻译，最近的感觉是英文论文中经常省略了主语或宾语的限定范围，在翻译为中文时，有必要把这些补齐，否则中文很怪。

原文：

Wills, B. D., Chong, C. D., Wilder, S. M., Eubanks, M. D., Holway, D. A., & Suarez, A. V. (2015). Effect of Carbohydrate Supplementation on Investment into Offspring Number, Size, and Condition in a Social Insect. PLoS ONE, 10(7). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0132440