Pre-imaginal biasing of caste in a primitively eusocial insect

1988 ◽  
Vol 233 (1271) ◽  
pp. 175-189 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Adult Life ◽  
Social Wasp ◽  
Caste Differentiation ◽  
Egg Laying ◽  
Ropalidia Marginata ◽  
Eusocial Insect ◽  
Eusocial Insects ◽  
Insect Societies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Primitively Eusocial

Primitively eusocial insects often lack morphological caste differentiation, leading to considerable flexibility in the social and reproductive roles that the adult insects may adopt. Although this flexibility and its consequences for social organization have received much attention there has been relatively little effort to detect any pre-imaginal effects leading to a bias in the potential caste of eclosing females. Experiments reported here show that only about 50 % of eclosing females of the tropical social wasp Ropalidia marginata build nests and lay eggs, in spite of being isolated from all conspecifics and being provided ad libitum food since eclosion. The number of empty cells in the parent nest, which we believe to be an indication of the queen’s declining influence, and a wasp’s own rate of feeding during adult life predict the probability of egg laying by eclosing females. These results call for an examination of the possibility that all females in primitively eusocial insect societies are not potentially capable of becoming egg layers and that reigning queens and possibly other adults exert an influence on the production of new queens.

scholarly journals Nutrition induced direct fitness for workers in a primitively eusocial wasp

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. U. Krishnan ◽  
A. Brahma ◽  
S. K. Chavan ◽  
R. Gadagkar
Keyword(s):  
Caste Differentiation ◽  
Egg Laying ◽  
Ropalidia Marginata ◽  
Eusocial Insects ◽  
Primitively Eusocial Wasp ◽  
Direct Fitness ◽  
Queen Replacement ◽  
Eusocial Wasp ◽  
Ad Libitum ◽  
Primitively Eusocial

AbstractEusocial insects are characterised by a reproductive caste differentiation such that egg-laying is restricted to a small number of queens. The majority of the colony members function as non-reproducing workers and gain indirect fitness by rearing the offspring of the reproductives. In primitively eusocial species, some workers can also get direct fitness by sneaking in some eggs in the presence of the queens, replacing the queens and becoming new queens, or initiating new nests. Here we aimed to understand the factors that permit some workers to gain direct fitness and alter the number of workers doing so, using the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata. We transplanted 12 naturally occurring colonies into large laboratory cages where there was adequate space for the workers to leave their natal nests and initiate new colonies. We compared six control colonies that we provided with ad libitum food placed near the nest to six test colonies in which we hand-fed the wasps in addition to the ad libitum food. Wasps in test colonies consumed more food, showed more aggression, replaced their queens, and initiated new nests significantly more often than those in control colonies. When considering all 12 colonies, the rates of queen replacement and nest foundation were significantly positively correlated with food consumption rates. The additional nutrition gained by hand-fed wasps appears to help workers in test colonies to develop their ovaries and lay eggs, implying that they are nutritionally castrated in control colonies.

scholarly journals No actual conflict over colony inheritance despite high potential conflict in the social wasp Polistes dominulus

2009 ◽  
Vol 276 (1662) ◽  
pp. 1593-1601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thibaud Monnin ◽  
Alessandro Cini ◽  
Vincent Lecat ◽  
Pierre Fédérici ◽  
Claudie Doums
Keyword(s):  
Inclusive Fitness ◽  
Social Wasp ◽  
Egg Laying ◽  
Polistes Dominulus ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
Fitness Consequences ◽  
Insect Societies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Laboratory Colonies ◽  
Egg Destruction

Social insect societies are outstanding examples of cooperation and conflict. Individuals work together, yet seek to increase their inclusive fitness at each others' expense. One such conflict is over colony inheritance, when a queen inherits the colony following the death of the previous queen. Colony inheritance is common in the social wasp Polistes dominulus , and it can have dramatic fitness consequences. The subordinate inheriting the colony is often unrelated to the initial foundress (alpha) and the workers, who therefore get zero inclusive fitness. Workers are capable of mating and reproducing, so that inheritance by a subordinate rather than by a related worker is surprising. Using patterns of egg-laying and egg destruction, we show in 32 laboratory colonies that, upon the removal of alpha, workers fully accepted a subordinate as the new breeder. This new alpha monopolized reproduction to the same extent as alpha, and there was no increase in reproduction by workers and other subordinates. Why workers accept a potentially unrelated subordinate as breeder rather than a full-sister worker is unclear. They may be constrained to do so, and they may seek fitness benefits by producing males later in the season or by absconding the nest.

Males of the social wasp Ropalidia marginata can feed larvae, given an opportunity

2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruchira Sen ◽  
Raghavendra Gadagkar
Keyword(s):  
Social Wasp ◽  
Ropalidia Marginata ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Rethinking recognition: social context in adult life rather than early experience shapes recognition in a social wasp

2020 ◽  
Vol 375 (1802) ◽  
pp. 20190468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Cappa ◽  
Alessandro Cini ◽  
Lisa Signorotti ◽  
Rita Cervo
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Insects ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Experimental Tests ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Social Wasp ◽  
Social Recognition ◽  
Sensitive Period ◽  
The Social

Social recognition represents the foundation of social living. To what extent social recognition is hard-wired by early-life experience or flexible and influenced by social context of later life stages is a crucial question in animal behaviour studies. Social insects have represented classic models to investigate the subject, and the acknowledged idea is that relevant information to create the referent template for nest-mate recognition (NMR) is usually acquired during an early sensitive period in adult life. Experimental evidence, however, highlighted that other processes may also be at work in creating the template and that such a template may be updated during adult life according to social requirements. However, currently, we lack an ad hoc experiment testing the alternative hypotheses at the basis of NMR ontogeny in social insects. Thus, to investigate the mechanisms underlying the ontogeny of NMR in Polistes wasps, a model genus in recognition studies, and their different role in determining recognition abilities, we subjected Polistes dominula workers to different olfactory experiences in different phases of their life before inserting them into the social environment of a novel colony and testing them in recognition bioassays. Our results show that workers develop their NMR abilities based on their social context rather than through pre-imaginal and early learning or self-referencing. Our study demonstrates that the social context represents the major component shaping recognition abilities in a social wasp, therefore shedding new light on the ontogeny of recognition in paper wasps and prompting the reader to rethink about the traditional knowledge at the basis of the recognition in social insects. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Signal detection theory in recognition systems: from evolving models to experimental tests'.

Nestmate discrimination in the social wasp Ropalidia marginata: chemical cues and chemosensory mechanism

2014 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 113-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aniruddha Mitra ◽  
Arathy Ramachandran ◽  
Raghavendra Gadagkar
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Cues ◽  
Social Wasp ◽  
Ropalidia Marginata ◽  
Nestmate Discrimination ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Built to change: dominance strategy changes with life stage in a primitively eusocial bee

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Orlova ◽  
Erin D Treanore ◽  
Etya Amsalem
Keyword(s):  
Life Stage ◽  
Dominance Rank ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Egg Laying ◽  
Overt Aggression ◽  
Eusocial Insects ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Chemical Signalling ◽  
Strategy Changes ◽  
Primitively Eusocial

Access to reproduction is determined by an individual dominance rank in many species and is achieved through aggression and/or dominance signalling. In eusocial insects one or several dominant females (queens) monopolize reproduction but to what extent queens rely on aggression and signalling remains obscure. Aggression is costly and its efficiency depends on the group size, whereas signalling may reduce the risks and costs of aggression. Both strategies are used to regulate reproduction in social taxa, with aggression being more common in small social groups, compared to signalling in larger societies. Here, we examine the use of aggression and chemical signalling in a social species (Bombus impatiens) where the dominant queen interacts with increasing numbers of workers as she ages. We found that the queen strategy to monopolize reproduction changes with life stage, shifting from overt aggression to chemical signalling as the queen gets older. Particularly, old queens exhibited a higher ratio of short to long cuticular hydrocarbons compared to young queens, an endogenous shift that was attributed to age, as all egg-laying queens were fecund and kept with the same number of workers. Our findings contribute to the understanding of reproductive dominance in the context of an individual life history.

scholarly journals Built to change: dominance strategy changes with life stage in a primitively eusocial bee

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (6) ◽  
pp. 1361-1368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Orlova ◽  
Erin Treanore ◽  
Etya Amsalem
Keyword(s):  
Life Stage ◽  
Dominance Rank ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Egg Laying ◽  
Overt Aggression ◽  
Chemical Signaling ◽  
Eusocial Insects ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Strategy Changes ◽  
Primitively Eusocial

Abstract Access to reproduction is determined by an individual’s dominance rank in many species and is achieved through aggression and/or dominance signaling. In eusocial insects, one or several dominant females (queens) monopolize reproduction but to what extent queens rely on aggression and signaling remains obscure. Aggression is costly and its efficiency depends on the group size, whereas signaling may reduce the risks and costs of aggression. Both strategies are used to regulate reproduction in social taxa, with aggression being more common in small social groups, compared to signaling in larger societies. Here, we examine the use of aggression and chemical signaling in a social species (Bombus impatiens) where the dominant queen interacts with increasing numbers of workers as she ages. We found that the queen’s strategy to monopolize reproduction changes with life stage, shifting from overt aggression to chemical signaling as the queen gets older. Particularly, old queens exhibited a higher ratio of short to long cuticular hydrocarbons compared to young queens, an endogenous shift that was attributed to age, as all egg-laying queens were fecund and kept with the same number of workers. Our findings contribute to the understanding of reproductive dominance in the context of an individual’s life history.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document