R. Gadagkar et al., QUEEN SUCCESS IS CORRELATED WITH WORKER-BROOD GENETIC RELATEDNESS IN A PRIMITIVELY EUSOCIAL WASP (ROPALIDIA-MARGINATA), Experientia, 49(8), 1993, pp. 714-717
Ropalidia marginata is a primitively eusocial polistine wasp in which,
although there is only one queen at any given time, frequent queen re
placements lead to a system of serial polygyny. One of the most striki
ng features of this system is the enormous variation in the success of
different queens. Measuring queen success as queen tenure, total numb
er of offspring produced, number of offspring produced per day of tenu
re, and proportion of eggs laid that develop into adults, we show here
that each measure of queen success is correlated with worker-brood ge
netic relatedness and not correlated with worker: brood ratio or the a
ge of the queen at takeover. We interpret these results as meaning tha
t queens are better able to obtain the cooperation of workers when wor
ker-brood genetic relatedness is high.