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High reproductive skew in the Neotropical paper wasp Polistes lanio

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Abstract

Reproductive conflicts are expected in societies where nonbreeding helpers retain the ability to produce offspring. Despite potential competition from reproductively capable nestmates in social wasps, egg laying tends to be monopolised by a single or relatively few queens. Genetic studies on reproductive partitioning in Polistes paper wasps suggest high reproductive skew in the genus. Conflict is thought to be minimal due to nestmate relatedness or the possibility of inheriting a reproductive monopoly on a nest; consequently, there are inclusive fitness opportunities for nonreproductive helpers. However, most studies are limited to temperate wasp species. Given the cosmopolitan distribution of Polistes, genetic data on group conflicts are required for a broader range of tropical species to determine whether these trends apply across climatic zones. We examined female reproductive skew in the Neotropical paper wasp Polistes lanio, genotyping a selection of adults and pupae from established post-emergence nests using single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). SNP-based pedigree analyses indicate a reproductive monopoly held by a single queen, with queen replacement from natal nestmates and evidence of possible multiple mating. Relatedness between pupal offspring was high (r = 0.71). It is likely that high reproductive skew among females is a founding trait of Polistes societies, conserved among species that have spread into new environments from Indomalayan origins.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Joshua Valverde, Andrew Stephenson, Calum Stephenson and Baldeo Ramlal for assistance in the field. The University of the West Indies, Christopher Starr and Mike Rutherford provided materials and field support. Trinidad & Tobago Wildlife Section Forestry Division provided special game licenses to conduct this research (licenses to S.S. 2013, R.J.S. 2014; export permit No. 001742). We thank Peter Graystock and Chris Wyatt for help in developing the SNP markers. Innes Cuthill and Elli Leadbeater provided useful comments on a related chapter as part of a doctoral thesis. We thank the two reviewers for their comments on the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by a NERC studentship to R.J.S.; Joshua Valverde was supported in the field as part of a Genetics Society Summer Studentship.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Biodiversity and Environmental Research, Department of Genetics Evolution and Environment, Division of Biosciences, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    R. J. Southon & S. Sumner

  2. School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TQ, UK

    R. J. Southon & A. N. Radford

Authors
  1. R. J. Southon
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  2. A. N. Radford
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  3. S. Sumner
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the designing of the study and writing the manuscript. RJS conducted field studies and lab/data analyses.

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Correspondence to R. J. Southon.

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Electronic supplementary material

Further data on SNP loci discovery can be viewed at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/SNP/snp_ss.cgi?subsnp_id=3023075125

Supplementary Table S1. Characteristics for post-emergence P. lanio nests used in this study.

Supplementary Table S2. Position, count, coverage and frequency for the 120 SNP loci discovered in P. canadensis and P. lanio (Southon et al., 2019).

Supplementary Table S3. SNP genotypes of sampled individuals (valid 93 loci).

Supplementary Table S4. Pairwise Wang relatedness estimates per nest between pupae.

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (XLSX 70 kb)

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Southon, R.J., Radford, A.N. & Sumner, S. High reproductive skew in the Neotropical paper wasp Polistes lanio. Insect. Soc. 67, 451–456 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-020-00780-7

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