Departamento de Biologia/Faculdade de Filosofia Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brazil.
Departamento de Morfologia e Fisiologia Animal, Universidade Estadual Paulista, Jaboticabal, São Paulo, Brazil.
PeerJ. 2022 Jun 7;10:e13571. doi: 10.7717/peerj.13571. eCollection 2022.
Wasps (Vespidae) are important organisms to understand the evolution of social behaviour. Wasps show different levels of sociality, which includes solitary to highly eusocial organisms. In social insect species, queens and workers differ in physiology and morphology. The Neotropical swarm-founding wasps (Epiponini) show a variety of caste syndromes. In this clade, the caste-flexibility is a unique characteristic, in which workers can become queens and swarm to start a new nest. The investigation of the caste system comparing several Epiponini species show a clear-cut morphological distinction between queens and workers, with a morphological continuum between queens and workers. However, whether cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) are used as cues for caste recognition in swarm-founding wasps is still unknown. We studied whether CHCs may display caste-linked differences in eleven species of Epiponini wasps and if CHCs differences would follow morphological patterns. Our results suggest that queens and workers of Epiponini wasps are chemically different from each other at two levels, qualitatively and quantitatively, or merely quantitatively. This variation seems to exist regardless of their morphological traits and may be useful to help us understanding how chemical communication evolved differently in these species.
黄蜂（Vespidae）是理解社会行为进化的重要生物。黄蜂表现出不同程度的社会性，包括独居到高度群居的生物。在社会性昆虫物种中，蜂王和工蜂在生理和形态上存在差异。新热带群集筑巢黄蜂（Epiponini）表现出多种职型综合征。在这个分支中，职型灵活性是一个独特的特征，其中工蜂可以变成蜂王并群集以开始新的巢穴。比较几个 Epiponini 物种的群体系统研究表明，蜂王和工蜂之间存在明显的形态区别，蜂王和工蜂之间存在形态连续体。然而，在群集筑巢黄蜂中，是否利用表皮碳氢化合物（CHCs）作为职型识别的线索尚不清楚。我们研究了 11 种 Epiponini 黄蜂的 CHCs 是否存在与职型相关的差异，以及 CHCs 的差异是否遵循形态模式。我们的结果表明，Epiponini 黄蜂的蜂王和工蜂在两个水平上彼此在化学上不同，定性和定量，或仅定量。这种变异似乎存在于它们的形态特征之外，并且可能有助于我们理解化学通讯在这些物种中是如何不同进化的。
