Affiliation:
1. Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of ScienceBangalore 560012, India
2. Evolutionary and Organismal Biology Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific ResearchJakkur, Bangalore 560064, India
Abstract
Unlike other primitively eusocial wasps,
Ropalidia marginata
colonies are usually headed by remarkably docile and behaviourally non-dominant queens who are nevertheless completely successful in maintaining reproductive monopoly. As in other species, loss of the queen results in one of the workers taking over as the next queen. But unlike in other species, here, the queen's successor cannot be predicted on the basis of dominance rank, other behaviours, age, body size or even ovarian development, in the presence of the former queen. But the swiftness with which one and only one individual becomes evident as the potential queen led us to suspect that there might be a designated successor to the queen known to the wasps, even though we cannot identify her in the queen's presence. Here, we present the results of experiments that support such a ‘cryptic successor’ hypothesis, and thereby lend credence to the idea that queen (and potential queen) pheromones act as honest signals of their fertility, in
R. marginata
.
Subject
General Agricultural and Biological Sciences,Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous)
Reference16 articles.
1. How do workers of the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata detect the presence of their queens?
2. Queen succession in the primitively eusocial tropical waspRopalidia marginata (Lep.) (Hymenoptera: Vespidae)
3. Social aggression in an age-dependent dominance hierarchy
4. Wasp who would be queen: a comparative study of two primitively eusocial species;Deshpande S.A;Curr. Sci,2006
5. Gadagkar R The social biology of Ropalidia marginata: toward understanding the evolution of eusociality. 2001 Cambridge MA:Harvard University Press.
Cited by
23 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献