Worker interests and male production in <i>Polistes gallicus,</i> a Mediterranean social wasp

Strassmann, Joan E.; Nguyen, Jimmy; Arévalo, Elisabeth; Cervo, Rita; Zacchi, Francesca; Turillazzi, Stefano; Queller, David C.

doi:10.1046/j.1420-9101.2003.00516.x

Cited by 22 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In four reunited ''orphaned'' colonies, aggressive workers also attacked the queen. Worker aggression towards queens and queen-killing is known from annual social insects at the end of a breeding season (e.g., Bourke, 1994;Strassmann et al, 2003), but ovary dissections of queens in our study confirmed that they were fully fertile. We therefore cannot exclude a change of colony odour during the separation period.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 51%

Worker dominance and policing in the ant Temnothorax unifasciatus

Brunner

Heınze

2009

Insect. Soc.

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In many species of eusocial Hymenoptera, conflict about the production of males is resolved through ''policing.'' Recent studies in wasps and the ant Temnothorax unifasciatus suggest that in these species policing workers are dominant themselves and selfishly increase their own chances of later becoming fertile. Policing may therefore to some extent be associated with dominance and selfishness, and dominance and policing behaviour are indeed difficult to distinguish and often not mutually exclusive. Moreover, selfish policing requires that workers form rank orders already in the presence of the queen. Here, we try to allocate aggressiveness by workers towards policing and/or dominance behaviour and investigate whether hierarchies based on subtle, non-aggressive interactions exist in queenright colonies of the ant T. unifasciatus. We either split colonies into a queenright and queenless halve or temporarily removed the queen from complete colonies, which in both cases allows a few dominant workers to lay eggs in the queenless colony. Reunification of colony halves and return of the queen to orphaned colonies led to aggression against those workers that had become fertile during the absence of the queen. Dominant workers in reunited, split colonies were more severely attacked than those in orphaned colonies after return of the queen. Furthermore, we observed that workers, which later became dominant egg layers under queenless conditions, have more contact with the queen than other workers. Both results corroborate the existence of rank relationships among workers in queenright colonies and show that results from policing experiments may be affected by the disturbance of pre-existing hierarchies through colony splitting.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 51%

Worker dominance and policing in the ant Temnothorax unifasciatus

Brunner

Heınze

2009

Insect. Soc.

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“…The finding of no significant effect of colony size on WPM suggests that the ratio of queens to workers is not an important general factor regulating reproductive division of labor in social Hymenoptera. The low instance of worker reproduction is therefore unlikely to be the consequence of queens using aggression or pheromones to suppress worker reproduction, except, perhaps, in the few species with very small numbers of workers (e.g., Strassmann et al 2003). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict over Male Parentage in Social Insects

2004

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Mutual policing is an important mechanism that maintains social harmony in group-living organisms by suppressing the selfish behavior of individuals. In social insects, workers police one another (worker-policing) by preventing individual workers from laying eggs that would otherwise develop into males. Within the framework of Hamilton's rule there are two explanations for worker-policing behavior. First, if worker reproduction is cost-free, worker-policing should occur only where workers are more closely related to queen- than to worker-produced male eggs (relatedness hypothesis). Second, if there are substantial costs to unchecked worker reproduction, worker-policing may occur to counteract these costs and increase colony efficiency (efficiency hypothesis). The first explanation predicts that patterns of the parentage of males (male parentage) are associated with relatedness, whereas the latter does not. We have investigated how male parentage varies with colony kin structure and colony size in 50 species of ants, bees, and wasps in a phylogenetically controlled comparative analysis. Our survey revealed that queens produced the majority of males in most of the species and that workers produced more than half of the males in less than 10% of species. Moreover, we show that male parentage does not vary with relatedness as predicted by the relatedness hypothesis. This indicates that intra- and interspecific variation in male parentage cannot be accounted for by the relatedness hypothesis alone and that increased colony efficiency is an important factor responsible for the evolution of worker-policing. Our study reveals greater harmony and more complex regulation of reproduction in social insect colonies than that expected from simple theoretical expectations based on relatedness only.

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“…Sampling across the comb in this way accounts for different egg‐layers in specific areas of the nest (as suggested in West‐Eberhard, ). Adults and pupae were sexed by counting the number of antennal flagellum segments; those with 10 segments scored as females and those with 11 as males (Strassmann et al, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

High indirect fitness benefits for helpers across the nesting cycle in the tropical paper wasp Polistes canadensis

Southon¹,

Bell²,

Graystock³

et al. 2019

Molecular Ecology

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Explaining the evolution of helping behaviour in the eusocial insects where nonreproductive (“worker”) individuals help raise the offspring of other individuals (“queens”) remains one of the most perplexing phenomena in the natural world. Polistes paper wasps are popular study models, as workers retain the ability to reproduce: such totipotency is likely representative of the early stages of social evolution. Polistes is thought to have originated in the tropics, where seasonal constraints on reproductive options are weak and social groups are effectively perennial. Yet, most Polistes research has focused on nontropical species, where seasonality causes family groups to disperse; cofoundresses forming new nests the following spring are often unrelated, leading to the suggestion that direct fitness through nest inheritance is key in the evolution of helping behaviour. Here, we present the first comprehensive genetic study of social structure across the perennial nesting cycle of a tropical Polistes—Polistes canadensis. Using both microsatellites and newly developed single nucleotide polymorphism markers, we show that adult cofoundresses are highly related and that brood production is monopolized by a single female across the nesting cycle. Nonreproductive cofoundresses in tropical Polistes therefore have the potential to gain high indirect fitness benefits as helpers from the outset of group formation, and these benefits persist through the nesting cycle. Direct fitness may have been less important in the origin of Polistes sociality than previously suggested. These findings stress the importance of studying a range of species with diverse life history and ecologies when considering the evolution of reproductive strategies.

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Worker interests and male production in Polistes gallicus, a Mediterranean social wasp

Cited by 22 publications

References 25 publications

Worker dominance and policing in the ant Temnothorax unifasciatus

Worker dominance and policing in the ant Temnothorax unifasciatus

Conflict over Male Parentage in Social Insects

High indirect fitness benefits for helpers across the nesting cycle in the tropical paper wasp Polistes canadensis

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