Colony size is linked to paternity frequency and paternity skew in yellowjacket wasps and hornets

BMC Evolutionary Biology

Michael Juhl²  Chun Chien¹  Kevin J Loope¹ 

[1] Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA;Bee Man Exterminators LLC, Olympia, WA, USA

关键词: Social evolution;    Vespa;    Dolichovespula;    Vespula;    Paternity skew;    Multiple paternity;    Polyandry;    Social insects;   

Others  :  1121719
DOI  :  10.1186/s12862-014-0277-x

 received in 2014-06-29, accepted in 2014-12-18,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

The puzzle of the selective benefits of multiple mating and multiple paternity in social insects has been a major focus of research in evolutionary biology. We examine paternity in a clade of social insects, the vespine wasps (the yellowjackets and hornets), which contains species with high multiple paternity as well as species with single paternity. This group is particularly useful for comparative analyses given the wide interspecific variation in paternity traits despite similar sociobiology and ecology of the species in the genera Vespula, Dolichovespula and Vespa. We describe the paternity of 5 species of yellowjackets (Vespula spp.) and we perform a phylogenetically controlled comparative analysis of relatedness, paternity frequency, paternity skew, colony size, and nest site across 22 vespine taxa.

Results

We found moderate multiple paternity in four small-colony Vespula rufa-group species (effective paternity 1.5 – 2.1), and higher multiple paternity in the large-colony Vespula flavopilosa (effective paternity ~3.1). Our comparative analysis shows that colony size, but not nest site, predicts average intracolony relatedness. Underlying this pattern, we found that greater colony size is associated with both higher paternity frequency and reduced paternity skew.

Conclusions

Our results support hypotheses focusing on the enhancement of genetic diversity in species with large colonies, and run counter to the hypothesis that multiple paternity is adaptively maintained due to sperm limitation associated with large colonies. We confirm the patterns observed in taxonomically widespread analyses by comparing closely related species of wasps with similar ecology, behavior and social organization. The vespine wasps may be a useful group for experimental investigation of the benefits of multiple paternity in the future.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Loope et al.; licensee BioMed Central.

【 图 表 】

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