Queen success is correlated with worker-brood genetic relatedness in a primitively eusocial wasp (Ropalidia marginata)

Gadagkar, R and Chandrashekara, K and Chandran, S and Bhagavan, S (1993) Queen success is correlated with worker-brood genetic relatedness in a primitively eusocial wasp (Ropalidia marginata). In: Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, 49 (8). pp. 714-717.

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Abstract

Ropalidia marginata is a primitively eusocial polistine wasp in which, although there is only one queen at any given time, frequent queen replacements lead to a system of serial polygyny. One of the most striking features of this system is the enormous variation in the success of different queens. Measuring queen success as queen tenure, total number of offspring produced, number of offspring produced per day of tenure, and proportion of eggs laid that develop into adults, we show here that each measure of queen success is correlated with worker-brood genetic relatedness and not correlated with worker:brood ratio or the age of the queen at takeover. We interpret these results as meaning that queens are better able to obtain the cooperation of workers when worker-brood genetic relatedness is high.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences
Publisher:	Springer
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to Springer.
Keywords:	Ropalidia marginata;Primitively eusocial wasp;Queen success;Worker-brood genetic relatedness;Inclusive fitness theory;Hymenoptera
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences
Date Deposited:	22 Feb 2007
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 04:34
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/9427

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