Males,but not females,mate with multiple partners: a laboratory study of a primitively eusocial wasp <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ropalidia marginata</Emphasis> |
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Authors: | M?C?Shilpa Email author" target="_blank">R?SenEmail author S?Samudre R?Gadagkar |
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Institution: | (1) Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India;(2) Department of Entomology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA;(3) Evolutionary and Organismal Biology Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Jakkur, Bangalore, 560064, India; |
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Abstract: | The intense interest in social Hymenoptera, on account of their elaborate sociality and the paradox of altruism, has often
suffered from considerable gender imbalance. This is partly due to the fact that worker behaviour and altruism are restricted
to the females and partly because males often live off the nest. Yet, understanding the males, especially in the context of
mating biology is essential even for understanding the evolution of sociality. Mating patterns have a direct bearing on the
levels of intra-colony genetic relatedness, which in turn, along with the associated costs and benefits of worker behaviour,
are central to our understanding of the evolution of sociality. Although mating takes place away from the nest in natural
colonies of the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata, mating can be observed in the laboratory if a male and a female are placed in a transparent, aerated plastic container,
and both wasps are in the range of 5–20 days of age. Here, we use this setup and show that males, but not females, mate serially
with multiple partners. The multiple mating behaviour of the males is not surprising because in nature males have to mate
with a number of females, only a few of whom will go on to lay eggs. The reluctance of R. marginata females to mate with multiple partners is consistent with the expectation of monogamy in primitively eusocial species with
totipotent females, although the apparent discrepancy with a previous work with allozyme markers in natural colonies suggesting
that females may sometimes mate with two or three different males remains to be resolved. |
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