Dry Season Migration by Costa Rican Lowland Paper Wasps to High Elevation Cold Dormancy Sites

Hunt, James H.; Brodie, Renae J.; Carithers, T. Paige; Goldstein, Paul Z.; Janzen, Daniel H.

doi:10.2307/2663974

Cited by 30 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Cluster formation, which probably evolved to increase the chance to survive winter (Hunt et al 1999), also gave wasps the opportunity to assess early one's own dominance potential (that may be determined both at imaginal and/or preimaginal stage) well before the nest foundation stage. For P. dominulus being dominant on the nest seems crucial for obtaining fitness for the following reasons: (1) direct kin recognition after hibernation is unlikely and relatedness among cofoundresses is lower compared to other Polistes species (Queller et al 2000;Dapporto et al 2004) and (2) the reproductive skew is at a very high level (dominant foundress lays more than 90% of the eggs (Queller et al 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social wasps offer an appealing opportunity to study this phenomenon in insects. In several species of Polistinae, future queens leave the natal nest soon after emergence and aggregate in large clusters during the bad season (Hunt et al 1999). Young Polistes dominulus wasps are already active in autumnal clusters showing most of the interactions that will occur at nest 6 months later (Dapporto et al 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Prehibernating aggregations of Polistes dominulus: an occasion to study early dominance assessment in social insects

Dapporto

Palagi

Cini

et al. 2006

Naturwissenschaften

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At a very early age several mammals establish a first dominance hierarchy, which often persists into adulthood. Social wasps offer an excellent opportunity to study such a phenomenon in insects. Indeed, foundresses of several paper wasps meet in clusters to hibernate from September to March. In spring, wasps found new associative nests where linear hierarchies occur. In the first phase of hibernation, clustering Polistes dominulus wasps show most of the social interactions occurring on the nest 6 months later. At the emergence from diapause, some females already show some behavioral and physiological traits typical of dominant individuals. Here, we investigated the significance of the interactions in the autumnal clusters. We demonstrated that in a given pair, it is more likely that the dominant wasp in autumn becomes the alpha female in spring after the nest foundation phase occurred. Moreover, we showed that dominant females in clusters have both larger body size and ovaries. As ovarian development mainly depends on the social context, our findings seem to indicate that social factors affect the tendency to dominate in aggregations. Furthermore, we suggest that some females may reinforce their physiological status by dominating in clusters, thus increasing the probability to become dominant in spring.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prehibernating aggregations of Polistes dominulus: an occasion to study early dominance assessment in social insects

Dapporto

Palagi

Cini

et al. 2006

Naturwissenschaften

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“…The majority of P. instabilis colonies at our site are established at the beginning of the rainy season (e.g., the middle of May; Hunt et al, 1999). Data were collected from 27 June to 24 July 2005 from seven post-worker emergence Polistes instabilis colonies.…”

Section: Study Site and Subject Coloniesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Worker reproductive competition affects division of labor in a primitively social paperwasp (Polistes instabilis)

Molina

O’Donnell

2008

Insect. Soc.

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Social insects are premier models for studying the evolution of self-organization in animal societies. Primitively social species may be informative about the early stages of social evolution and transitions in selforganization. Previous worker removal studies in Polistes instabilis paper wasps suggested that dominant but nonegglaying workers play an important role in regulating rates of task performance by inducing foraging in sub-A C H T U N G T R E N N U N G ordinates. We extend previous worker removal studies by quantifying changes in individuals behavior following removals, and by measuring associations between behavioral change and individuals reproductive capacity (ovary development). Workers changed their rates of aggressive behaviors more than queens following the dominant worker removals. Increases in workers rates of aggressive behaviors were correlated with decreases in their foraging rates. Changes in individual rates of social aggression were associated with their reproductive capacity: worker females with well-developed ovaries increased their rates of aggression. Further changes in rates of aggression after the dominant workers were returned also depended on ovary development. These patterns suggest that task performance and potential fecundity are linked in workers, and that worker interactions play a strong role in regulating task performance. We conclude that worker reproductive competition may have influenced the evolution of colony organization in social insects.

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“…Adult diapause (18) (i.e., reproductive diapause; see ref. 6), which often coincides with behavioral quiescence (20), has been speculated to underlie characteristics of gyne offspring in the paper wasp genus Polistes (21-24), a social insect that lacks discrete morphological castes (25). However, the occurrence of early gynes (26) and late workers (27) in Polistes (5) argues against the role of conventional ambient variables, such as photoperiod or temperature, as diapause cues in this taxon.…”

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confidence: 99%

A diapause pathway underlies the gyne phenotype inPolisteswasps, revealing an evolutionary route to caste-containing insect societies

Hunt

Kensinger

Kossuth

et al. 2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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146

125

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Colonies of social wasps, ants, and bees are characterized by the production of two phenotypes of female offspring, workers that remain at their natal nest and nonworkers that are potential colony reproductives of the next generation. The phenotype difference includes morphology and is fixed during larval development in ants, honey bees, and some social wasps, all of which represent an advanced state of sociality. Paper wasps (Polistes) lack morphological castes and are thought to more closely resemble an ancestral state of sociality wherein the phenotype difference between workers and nonworkers is established only during adult life. We address an alternative hypothesis: a bias toward the potential reproductive (gyne) phenotype among Polistes female offspring occurs during larval development and is based on a facultatively expressed ancestral life history trait: diapause. We show that two signatures of diapause (extended maturation time and enhanced synthesis and sequestration of a hexameric storage protein) characterize the development of gyne offspring in Polistes metricus. Hexameric storage proteins are implicated in silencing juvenile hormone signaling, which is a prerequisite for diapause. Diverging hexamerin protein dynamics driven by changes in larval provisioning levels thereby provide one possible mechanism that can cause an adaptive shift in phenotype bias during the Polistes colony cycle. This ontogenetic basis for alternative female phenotypes in Polistes challenges the view that workers and gynes represent behavior options equally available to every female offspring, and it exemplifies how social insect castes can evolve from casteless lineages.caste development ͉ hexameric storage proteins ͉ juvenile hormone ͉ life-history pleiotropy ͉ social behavior S ocial insects often show pronounced differences in behavior, physiology, and morphology between castes of workers (functionally sterile helpers) and reproductives (1).

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Dry Season Migration by Costa Rican Lowland Paper Wasps to High Elevation Cold Dormancy Sites

Cited by 30 publications

References 4 publications

Prehibernating aggregations of Polistes dominulus: an occasion to study early dominance assessment in social insects

Prehibernating aggregations of Polistes dominulus: an occasion to study early dominance assessment in social insects

Worker reproductive competition affects division of labor in a primitively social paperwasp (Polistes instabilis)

A diapause pathway underlies the gyne phenotype inPolisteswasps, revealing an evolutionary route to caste-containing insect societies

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