Spatial organization of collective food distribution in a paper wasp society.

Sharma, N and Gadagkar, R (2023) Spatial organization of collective food distribution in a paper wasp society. [Preprint]

	PDF suppl_biorxiv_2023.pdf - Published Version Restricted to Registered users only Download (792kB) | Request a copy
	PDF biorxiv_2023.pdf - Published Version Restricted to Registered users only Download (847kB) | Request a copy

Abstract

In social insect colonies, food transferred through space and time via nestmates carries both nutrition and information. We study the mechanism of spatio-temporal coordination (or the lack thereof) between multiple wasps for them to optimally solve the problem of feeding randomly placed larvae in a social insect colony. We followed each morsel of food brought into semi-natural colonies of the tropical paper wasp Ropalidia marginata, in each of 36 feeding bouts until the food was exhausted. We found that most acts of feeding larvae are performed by wasps that unload food from foragers, but unloading itself is highly skewed among individuals. We also found that larvae closer to the nest center were fed more frequently than those at the periphery, irrespective of their developmental stage. This differential feeding may have fitness consequences as it is known that well-fed larvae become voracious feeders as adults and have a higher likelihood to become reproductives. Using the analogies of the travelling salesman problem and the Hamiltonian path problem, we showed that individuals which disburse food to more larvae within a feeding bout adopted paths that were considerably shorter than expected by chance while the distinction between adopted and random routes was not as pronounced when the number of larvae fed in a bout was fewer. There was no spatial segregation between wasps feeding larvae in parallel, possibly building redundancy and avoiding larval starvation across bouts. Understanding the spatial organization of food transfer may be a key to understanding how insect societies achieve efficient social organization and division of labor. Keywords: social wasp, food distribution, travelling salesman problem, Hamiltonian path problem, self-organization

Item Type:	Preprint
Additional Information:	The copyright for this article belongs to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Keywords:	social wasp, food distribution, travelling salesman problem, Hamiltonian path problem, self-organization
Department/Centre:	Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences
Date Deposited:	28 Nov 2023 05:04
Last Modified:	28 Nov 2023 05:04
URI:	https://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/83009

Actions (login required)

View Item