The role of queens in colonies of the swarm-founding wasp Parachartergus colobopterus

Abstract

Social insect queens reproduce while workers generally do not. Queens may also have other behavioural roles in the colony. In small, independent-founding colonies of social wasps, the dominant queen physically enforces her interests over those of the workers and serves as a pacemaker of the colony, stimulating workers to forage and engage in other tasks. By contrast, in large-colony, swarm-founding wasps, the collective interests of the workers are fulfilled in sex allocation and production of males, whether or not they coincide with the interests of the queens. The behavioural role of the queens in such species has not been extensively studied. We investigated the role of the queens both in regulating worker activity and in reducing the numbers of reproductively active queens in the swarm-founding epiponine wasp Parachartergus colobopterus. We found no evidence that queens regulate worker activity, as they were rarely involved in any interactions. Worker activity may be self-organized, without centralized active control by anyone. Furthermore, we found no evidence that the reduction in queen number characteristic of this tribe of wasps occurs in response to aggression among queens. The reduction in queen number may be a result of worker treatment of queens, although worker discrimination against some queens was not obvious in our data. i