Data from: Colony stage and not facultative policing explains pattern of worker reproduction in the Saxon wasp
| Main Authors: | Bonckaert, Wim, van Zweden, Jelle S, d'Ettorre, Patrizia, Billen, Johan, Wenseleers, Tom |
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| Format: | info dataset Journal |
| Terbitan: |
, 2011
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
https://zenodo.org/record/4967838 |
Daftar Isi:
- Inclusive fitness theory predicts that in colonies of social Hymenoptera headed by a multiple mated queen, workers should benefit from policing eggs laid by other workers. Foster & Ratnieks (2000) provided evidence that in the vespine wasp Dolichovespula saxonica, workers police other workers' eggs only in colonies headed by a multiple mated queen, but not in those headed by a single mated one. This conclusion, however, was based on a relatively small sample size and the original study did not control for possible confounding variables such as the seasonal colony progression of the nests. Our aim, therefore, was to reinvestigate whether or not facultative worker policing occurs in D. saxonica. Remarkably, our data shows that in the studied Danish population, there was no correlation between worker-worker relatedness and the percentage of worker-derived males. In addition, we show that variability in cuticular hydrocarbon profiles among the workers did not significantly correlate with relatedness, and that workers therefore probably did not have sufficient information on queen mating frequency from the workers' cuticular hydrocarbon profiles. Hence, there was no evidence that workers facultatively policed other workers' eggs in response to queen mating frequency. Nevertheless, our data do show that the seasonal progression of the nest and the location in which the males were reared both explain the patterns of worker reproduction found. Overall, our results suggest that the earlier evidence for facultative worker policing in D. saxonica may have been due to accidental correlations with certain confounding variables, or, alternatively, that there are large interpopulation differences in the expression of worker policing.
- Comb surface areas D. saxonicasurface area of the small-sized top comb and subsequent large-celled combs of the collected colonies in cm2microsattelite data D. saxonicadata on microsattelite genotyping of female and male brood including origin of colony, brood type, patriline, reproductive status (NW: non-reproductive worker; RW: reproductive worker), whether a male was produced by the queen (0) or a worker (1) and from which comb (small-celled or large-celled) the male pupae were collected.CHC data D. saxonicadata per individual wasp on origin of colony, patriline, reproductive status (NW: non-reproductive worker; RW: reproductive worker) and raw integration of 56 chromatographic hydrocarbon peaks