Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://dr.iiserpune.ac.in:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/1573
Title: Antecedents of behavioural and reproductive dominance in pairs of the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata
Authors: BANG, ALOK
Dept. of Biology
Keywords: Aggression
Agonism
Eusociality
Social behavior
TOC-JAN-2019
2019
Issue Date: Jan-2019
Publisher: Elsevier B.V.
Citation: Behavioural Processes, 158, 1-3.
Abstract: What factors predispose some individuals to become reproductively dominant in a group where every member can reproduce? Antecedents of reproductive dominance have often been investigated in primitively eusocial species where reproductive skew exists despite adult reproductive potential displayed by every group-member, but such studies have rarely focused on small, incipient colonies. Here, I investigated antecedents of behavioural and reproductive dominance in pairs of the Indian paper wasp Ropalidia marginata. Common antecedents of behavioural dominance such as body size and age were inoperative in pairs of R. marginata. Moreover, age and behavioural dominance, but not body size, influenced reproductive dominance in pairs. These findings are not only different from other primitively eusocial insects, but also different from the colonies of R. marginata. It is likely that antecedents of reproductive dominance are different not only in different species, but also change with group size within a species, such that the role of behavioural dominance to achieve reproductive monopoly remains more effective in small groups such as pairs, and becomes less effective as the group size increases. These results require further investigations into the effect of group size on individual behaviour in group-living animals.
URI: http://dr.iiserpune.ac.in:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/1573
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2018.10.025
ISSN: 0376-6357
1872-8308
Appears in Collections:JOURNAL ARTICLES

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