How Many Parents Do the Wasps from a Fig Have?

Abstract

In three fruit crops of Costa Rican lowland deciduous forest figs, the mean number of pollinating agaonid female wasps which entered the figs was 1.07, 2.97, and 1.72 (93, 53, and 52 percent, respectively, of the figs received only 1 wasp). In these crops, the males would be quite likely to mate with their sisters since mating occurs in the fig before the newly emerged females leave. In one crop, there was a mean of 7.2 potential mothers per fig (maximum of 32 wasps per fig), and it would appear that the offspring within one of these figs would be of much more heterogeneous parentage. However, since the first wasps to enter the fig probably do most of the pollinating and ovipositing, I suspect that these figs also have only a few mothers for most of the offspring that they contain. THE FLORETS OF FIG (Ficus spp.) inflorescences ( syconia) are pollinated by minute wasps (Agaonidae). Access to the florets is restricted by a series of overlapping scales blocking the entrance hole ( ostiole) to the spheroidal cavity containing the florets. The female wasps do not leave this cavity after entering. Once inside they pollinate the florets and oviposit in some of them. If the fig interior is examined before the developing florets expand and crush the remains of the wasp, it is possible to know the maximum number of female agaonids that are the parents of the set of agaonid wasps that will emerge from the florets and mate within itself inside the ripening fig. Having just completed a review of the fig-fig wasp interaction (Janzen 1979b), I can state with certainty that there is only one record (Hamilton 1979) of this interesting variable as an approach to understanding the degree of relatedness among fig females and their mates. Here I report the frequency of pollinating female fig wasps among the figs they have recently entered, for four fig crops growing in the deciduous forest lowlands of Guanacaste Province,