title: Modelling nutrition across organizational levels: from individuals to superorganisms.
abstract: The Geometric Framework for nutrition has been increasingly used to describe how individual animals regulate their intake of multiple nutrients to maintain target physiological states maximizing growth and reproduction. However, only a few studies have considered the potential influences of the social context in which these nutritional decisions are made. Social insects, for instance, have evolved extreme levels of nutritional interdependence in which food collection, processing, storage and disposal are performed by different individuals with different nutritional needs. These social interactions considerably complicate nutrition and raise the question of how nutrient regulation is achieved at multiple organizational levels, by individuals and groups. Here, we explore the connections between individual- and collective-level nutrition by developing a modelling framework integrating concepts of nutritional geometry into individual-based models. Using this approach, we investigate how simple nutritional interactions between individuals can mediate a range of emergent collective-level phenomena in social arthropods (insects and spiders) and provide examples of novel and empirically testable predictions. We discuss how our approach could be expanded to a wider range of species and social systems.
authors.affiliation: The Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, Toulouse 31062, France; Université de Toulouse (UPS), Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, Toulouse 31062, France. Electronic address: mathieu.lihoreau@univ-tlse3.fr.
authors.forename: Mathieu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lihoreau
authors.affiliation: The Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Camille
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Buhl
authors.affiliation: School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Charleston
authors.affiliation: Department of Entomology, Interdisciplinary Faculty of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Texas A&M University, TX 77843-2475, USA.
authors.forename: Gregory A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Sword
authors.affiliation: The Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; Faculty of Veterinary Science, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Raubenheimer
authors.affiliation: The Charles Perkins Centre, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia; School of Biological Sciences, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
authors.forename: Stephen J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Simpson
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D007313:Insecta / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D009747:Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D012098:Reproduction; D012919:Social Behavior
keywords: Collective behaviour; Division of labour; Geometric Framework; Individual-based model; Nutritional ecology; Social arthropods