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Nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an Australian paper wasp

Social insects are highly diverse in their social structures, aside from the consistent presence of reproductive castes. Among social insects, the Australian paper wasp Ropalidia plebeiana constructs extremely dense colony aggregations consisting of hundreds of colonies within a few square meters; h...

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Autores principales: Tsuchida, Koji, Ishiguro, Norio, Saito-Morooka, Fuki, Kojima, Jun-ichi, Spradbery, Philip
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9329314/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35896807
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-17117-y
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author Tsuchida, Koji
Ishiguro, Norio
Saito-Morooka, Fuki
Kojima, Jun-ichi
Spradbery, Philip
author_facet Tsuchida, Koji
Ishiguro, Norio
Saito-Morooka, Fuki
Kojima, Jun-ichi
Spradbery, Philip
author_sort Tsuchida, Koji
collection PubMed
description Social insects are highly diverse in their social structures, aside from the consistent presence of reproductive castes. Among social insects, the Australian paper wasp Ropalidia plebeiana constructs extremely dense colony aggregations consisting of hundreds of colonies within a few square meters; however, little is known about the aggregation structures. We genetically analyzed the colony and population structure of R. plebeiana, and concomitant variations in colony sex ratios. In spring, the foundress (candidate queen) group started their colonies on a single old comb from the previous season, subsequently dividing these old combs via relatedness-based comb-cutting. Female philopatry, a prerequisite condition of Local Resource Competition (LRC), was confirmed. The colony sex ratio of reproductive individuals (male and female offspring for the next generation) became slightly male-biased in larger colonies, as predicted under LRC. However, the number of foundresses was positively associated with the number of reproductive individuals, suggesting that Local Resource Enhancement (LRE) also operates. Although the population structure appears to meet the prerequisites of LRC, the sex ratio appears to be modulated by factors other than LRC. Rather, through LRE, the availability of female helpers at the founding stage is likely to mitigate the sex ratios predicted under LRC.
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spelling pubmed-93293142022-07-29 Nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an Australian paper wasp Tsuchida, Koji Ishiguro, Norio Saito-Morooka, Fuki Kojima, Jun-ichi Spradbery, Philip Sci Rep Article Social insects are highly diverse in their social structures, aside from the consistent presence of reproductive castes. Among social insects, the Australian paper wasp Ropalidia plebeiana constructs extremely dense colony aggregations consisting of hundreds of colonies within a few square meters; however, little is known about the aggregation structures. We genetically analyzed the colony and population structure of R. plebeiana, and concomitant variations in colony sex ratios. In spring, the foundress (candidate queen) group started their colonies on a single old comb from the previous season, subsequently dividing these old combs via relatedness-based comb-cutting. Female philopatry, a prerequisite condition of Local Resource Competition (LRC), was confirmed. The colony sex ratio of reproductive individuals (male and female offspring for the next generation) became slightly male-biased in larger colonies, as predicted under LRC. However, the number of foundresses was positively associated with the number of reproductive individuals, suggesting that Local Resource Enhancement (LRE) also operates. Although the population structure appears to meet the prerequisites of LRC, the sex ratio appears to be modulated by factors other than LRC. Rather, through LRE, the availability of female helpers at the founding stage is likely to mitigate the sex ratios predicted under LRC. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-07-27 /pmc/articles/PMC9329314/ /pubmed/35896807 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-17117-y Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Tsuchida, Koji
Ishiguro, Norio
Saito-Morooka, Fuki
Kojima, Jun-ichi
Spradbery, Philip
Nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an Australian paper wasp
title Nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an Australian paper wasp
title_full Nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an Australian paper wasp
title_fullStr Nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an Australian paper wasp
title_full_unstemmed Nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an Australian paper wasp
title_short Nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an Australian paper wasp
title_sort nepotistic colony fission in dense colony aggregations of an australian paper wasp
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9329314/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35896807
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-17117-y
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