Affiliation:
1. School of Biological Sciences, A12, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Abstract
Worker policing, wherein social insect workers prevent their sisters from reproducing by eating worker-laid eggs, is recognized as a textbook example of kin selection in action. However, the evolutionary basis of policing was recently challenged in a study that suggested that police-workers remove worker-laid eggs not because rearing workers' sons reduces worker fitness, but merely because worker-laid eggs have low viability. Here, we refute Pirk
et al.
's conclusions. First, we confirm earlier work that showed equal viability of eggs laid by queens and workers. Second, a statistical analysis of the data of Pirk
et al.
reveals that their own data do not support the conclusion that worker-laid eggs are policed merely because of their low viability. Third, we present data that unequivocally show that police-workers cannot discriminate between dead and live eggs. Hence, our study seriously weakens the challenge to the kin-selected basis of policing in honeybees.
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous)
Cited by
36 articles.
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