AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

Biography

Dr. Jennifer Fewell received her PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her area of research is the behavioral ecology and evolution of social insects. She is interested in the evolution of task organization in these insects. Her current work focuses on how intrinsic variation in task performance by individual workers affects colony patterns of division of labor. She is testing a model hypothesizing that division of labor can self-organize from variation among workers in their intrinsic sensitivity to different tasks.

Additionally, she is examining the role of genotypic variation in colony task performance. Dr. Fewell's research uses both honey bees and ants as model systems. She uses both behavioral and genetic techniques in her empirical work, including RAPD (Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA) analysis and gel electrophoresis. Her publications include “Social Insect Networks,” Science, 26 September 2003, 1867; and with R.E. Page Jr. “The emergence of division of labor without selection in forced foundress associations of the ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus,” Evolutionary Ecology (1999) and “Genotypic variation in foraging responses to environmental stimuli by honey bees, Apis mellifera,” Experientia 49:1106-1112 (1993).