Can Dufour's gland compounds honestly signal fertility in the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata?

Mitra, Aniruddha and Gadagkar, Raghavendra (2011) Can Dufour's gland compounds honestly signal fertility in the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata? In: Naturwissenschaften, 98 (2). pp. 157-161.

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Abstract

Unlike queens of typical primitively eusocial species, Ropalidia marginata queens are docile and non-interactive, and hence cannot be using dominance to maintain their status. It appears that the queen maintains reproductive monopoly through a pheromone, of which the Dufour's gland is at least one source. Here, we reconfirm earlier results showing that queens and workers can be correctly classified on a discriminant function using the compositions of their respective Dufour's glands, and also demonstrate consistent queen-worker differences based on categories of compounds and on single compounds also in some cases. Since the queen pheromone is expected to be an honest signal of the fecundity of a queen, we investigate the correlation of Dufour's gland compounds with ovarian activation of queens. Our study shows that Dufour's gland compounds in R. marginata correlate with the state of ovarian activation of queens, suggesting that such compounds may portray the fecundity of a queen, and may indeed function as honest signals of fertility.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Naturwissenschaften
Publisher:	Springer
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to Springer.
Keywords:	Ropalidia marginata; Queen pheromone; Dufour's gland; Ovarian activation; Honest signal
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences
Date Deposited:	09 Mar 2011 04:48
Last Modified:	09 Mar 2011 04:48
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/35886

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