Liebig Jürgen, Monnin Thibaud, Turillazzi Stefano
LS Verhaltensphysiologie und Soziobiologie, Biozentrum, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg, Germany.
Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Jul 7;272(1570):1339-44. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2005.3073.
Assessing a conspecific's potential is often crucial to increase one's fitness, e.g. in female choice, contests with rivals or reproductive conflicts in animal societies. In the latter, helpers benefit from accurately assessing the fertility of the breeder as an indication of inclusive fitness. There is evidence that this can be achieved using chemical correlates of reproductive activity. Here, we show that queen quality can be assessed by directly monitoring her reproductive output. In the paper wasp Polistes dominulus, we mimicked a decrease in queen fertility by regularly removing brood. This triggered ovarian development and egg-laying by many workers, which strongly suggests that brood abundance is a reliable cue of queen quality. Brood abundance can be monitored when workers perform regular brood care in small size societies where each brood element is kept in a separate cell. Our results also show that although the queen was not manipulated, and thus remained healthy and fully fertile, she did not control worker egg-laying. Nevertheless, when workers laid eggs, the queen secured a near reproductive monopoly by selectively destroying these eggs, a mechanism known as 'queen policing'. By contrast, workers destroyed comparatively few queen-laid eggs, but did destroy each other's eggs.
评估同种个体的潜力通常对于提高自身适应性至关重要，例如在动物社会中的雌性选择、与对手的竞争或生殖冲突中。在后者中，帮手通过准确评估繁殖者的生育能力来作为广义适应性的指标而受益。有证据表明，这可以通过生殖活动的化学相关物来实现。在这里，我们表明可以通过直接监测蜂王的生殖产出评估蜂王质量。在造纸胡蜂（Polistes dominulus）中，我们通过定期移除幼虫来模拟蜂王生育能力的下降。这引发了许多工蜂的卵巢发育和产卵，这强烈表明幼虫数量是蜂王质量的可靠线索。在小型社会中，当工蜂进行定期的育幼护理时，每个幼虫个体都被放置在单独的巢室中，此时幼虫数量可以被监测到。我们的结果还表明，尽管蜂王没有受到操控，因此保持健康且完全具备生育能力，但她并没有控制工蜂产卵。然而，当工蜂产卵时，蜂王通过选择性地破坏这些卵来确保近乎生殖垄断，这一机制被称为“蜂王监督”。相比之下，工蜂破坏的蜂王产的卵相对较少，但确实会破坏彼此产的卵。
