Preface: Pheromone-Mediation of Female Reproduction and Reproductive Dominance in Social Species

Abstract

Reproductive skew, a common feature in social animals, is an evolutionary enigma requiring both ultimate and proximate explanations. At the ultimate level, the question is whether reproductive subordination is coercive or self-restrained, i.e., whether the dominant reproductive forcefully inhibits the subordinate's reproduction, or the subordinate actually expresses reproductive restraint directed by inclusive fitness considerations (Hamilton 1972;Keller and Nonacs 1993). At the proximate level, the question is not only what are the mechanisms regulating reproductive skew, but also whether they are shared across species, either by being conservatively shared among phylogenetically-related social species or via convergent or parallel evolution with different species adopting similar strategies to regulate reproduction.Many signals, especially in insects, are hypothesized to have evolved from non-communicative cues that are a byproduct of physiological processes (Bradbury and Vehrencamp 2001; Stökl and Steiger 2017;Wyatt 2014a). However, we have a limited understanding of the signals and mechanisms regulating reproduction, and in many cases they appear diverse and involve different modalities of communication, affecting both the behavior and the physiology of the recipients (Schulz 2004;Symonds and Elgar 2008).

Pheromonal Regulation of the Reproductive Division of Labor in Social Insects

“…However, the uniformity of CHCs as QPs is challenged by subsequent studies regarding its methodological bias and logical pitfall. First, because of CHCs abundance and ease in detection and spectral/structural analysis, the research preference for CHCs inevitably caused negligence of other compounds (Amsalem and Hefetz, 2018). Therefore, recent reviews and studies called for attention to be paid to the exocrine glands, which are the sources of many described trial and alarm pheromones (Dani and Turillazzi, 2018;Villalta et al, 2018;Hefetz, 2019).…”

“…Recent studies and reviews have proposed several guidelines in seeking unknown QPs (Amsalem and Hefetz, 2018;Villalta et al, 2018;Hefetz, 2019). Firstly, QPs may be multicomponent and pleiotropic.…”