QUEEN SUCCESS IS CORRELATED WITH WORKER-BROOD GENETIC RELATEDNESS IN A PRIMITIVELY EUSOCIAL WASP (ROPALIDIA-MARGINATA)

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.