Group Colony Foundation inPolistes Annularis (Hymenoptera: Vespidae)

More than one inseminated female in colonies of the independent-founding wasp Mischocyttarus cassununga von Ihering (Hymenoptera, Vespidae)

“…4 and 5). Similar results were observed in Polistes annularis Linnaeus, 1763 by Strassmann (1983) and in Ropalidia marginata Dover and Rao, 1922and R. cyathiformis van der Vecht, 1941by Deshpande et al (2006. We suggest that the presence of more than one inseminated female in the same colony might be beneficial to the nest cycle in the present species, since when the queen disappears or dies the colony would ultimately be doomed without another wasp capable of superseding it.…”

Competition and kin discrimination in colony founding by social Hymenoptera

“…Ant queens generally excise their wings before beginning to search for nest sites and are very vulnerable to predation and environmental stresses (Wilson, 1971). On the other hand, wasp queens are more mobile and formidable, and can search at least several days for a nest site (Evans and West-Eberhard, 1970;Strassmann, 1983). Therefore, wasp colony founding probably involves many more nest site encounters than with ants.…”

“…One limitation to this model is that group sizes of larger than two are not considered although they are commonly found in both wasps and ants (Bartz and H611dobler, 1982;Strassmann, 1983;). This is due in part to the 'curse of dimensionality' for dynamic programming (Houston et al, 1988) in which computer limitations restrict the number of possible state variables.…”

“…Mischocyttarus mexicanus (Litte, 1977) Yes Polistes annularis (Strassmann, 1983) Yes P. bellicosus (Strassmann et al, 1987) Yes P. exclamans (Allen et al, 1982) Yes P. fuscatus (Klahn, 1979) Yes (Noonan, 1981) Yes (Post and Jeanne, 1982) Yes (Bornais et al, 1983) Yes P. gallicus (Pratte, 1982) No P. metricus (Ross and Gamboa, 1981) Yes…”

“…Furthermore, competitive ability in dominating egg-laying appears to correlate predictably with large size in P. gallicus, P. metricus and P. fuscatus multiple foundress associations (Turillazzi and Pardi, 1977;Dropkin and Gamboa, 1981;Noonan, 1981). However, although larger P. annularis queens also have a competitive advantage, group membership is random with respect to queen size (Strassmann, 1983;Sullivan and Strassman, 1984). This can be interpreted as a lack of sensitivity to competitive ability, but until individual behavior is tested, alternative hypotheses such as a competitive ideal free distribution cannot be ruled out.…”