Assessment of queen mating frequency by workers in social hymenoptera

Abstract

Worker Hymenoptera may increase their inclusive fitness by adopting facultative reproductive strategies that depend on assessment of queen mating frequency. An analysis of how workers might assess mating frequency, based on the diversity of colonymate sisters' odor phenotypes, is presented for a single-locus multi-allele odor generating system in a situation where queens mate with either one or two males. Errors in mating frequency assessment are shown to be frequent, except when many allelically diverse loci are used, and the assessment rule that minimizes errors is shown to depend on allelic diversity. Errors will still occur even if workers base their assessment on interactions with many sisters, because the information provided by encounters with different sisters is not independent, and because odor diversity of sisters is affected by chance as well as by queen mating frequency.