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Related Experiment Videos

Complex social behaviour can select for variability in visual features: a case study in Polistes wasps.

Elizabeth A Tibbetts1

  • 1Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. eat11@email.arizona.edu

Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|September 7, 2004
PubMed
Summary

Social wasps with flexible nesting strategies exhibit more variable markings for individual recognition. This suggests natural selection favors distinctiveness in complex social behaviors like reproductive transactions.

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Animal behavior
  • Social insects

Background:

  • Individual recognition is crucial in many animal societies.
  • Phenotypic variability is necessary for individual recognition, but its evolutionary drivers are not fully understood.
  • Polistes fuscatus wasps display variable facial and abdominal markings for recognizing individuals within complex social structures.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the link between social behavior and visual marking variability in social wasps.
  • To determine if social behavior can drive the evolution of phenotypic variability for individual recognition.

Main Methods:

  • Comparative analysis of marking variability across social wasp taxa.
  • Utilizing a concentrated changes test to assess the association between marking variability and nesting strategy.

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Main Results:

  • Marking variability in social wasps is significantly correlated with nesting strategy.
  • Species with flexible nest-founding strategies possess highly variable markings.
  • Species lacking flexible nest-founding strategies show low marking variability.

Conclusions:

  • Individual recognition is likely prevalent among social wasps.
  • Natural selection may be a key factor in the evolution and maintenance of variable markings.
  • Flexible nesting strategies, involving reproductive transactions, may select for increased individual distinctiveness.