Estimates of Genetic Relatedness Among Males in a Polygynous Wasp

Abstract

Cyclical oligogyny is considered to be the mechanism that is most likely to be responsible for stabilizing cooperation in polygynous, epiponine wasps, in which single-queen colonies produce new queens and multiple-queen colonies produce males. In contrast with the number of studies on relatedness among adult females, we know little about relatedness among males in polygynous epiponine wasps. We estimated worker and male relatedness in the Brazilian epiponine wasp Polybia paulista Ihering and found that colonies of P. paulista produced males when they contained multiple queens. Although average relatedness within males did not differ significantly from 0.5, the number of alleles observed suggests that there were more than one queen to produce males in each colony. Our data would be helpful to elucidate dynamics of the male production in a colony of epiponine wasps.