Johanna Dunn
Higher aggression towards closer relatives by soldier larvae in a polyembryonic wasp
Dunn, Johanna; Dunn, Derek W.; Strand, Michael R.; Hardy, Ian C.W.
Authors
Derek W. Dunn
Michael R. Strand
Ian C.W. Hardy
Abstract
In the polyembryonic wasp Copidosoma floridanum, females commonly lay one male and one female egg in a lepidopteran host. Both sexes proliferate clonally within the growing host larva. Distinct larval castes develop from each wasp egg, the majority being ‘reproductives’ plus some ‘soldiers’ which sacrifice reproduction and attack competitors. Maturing mixed sex broods are usually female biased, as expected when intra-brood mating is common. Pre-mating dispersal followed by outbreeding is expected to increase sexual conflict over brood sex ratios and result in greater soldier attack rates. Owing to sexually asymmetric relatedness, intra-brood conflicts are expected to be resolved primarily via female soldier attack. We observed soldier behaviour in vitro to test whether lower intra-brood relatedness (siblings from either within-strain or between-strain crosses were presented) increased inter-sexual aggression by female as well as male soldiers. As found in prior studies, females were more aggressive than males but, contrary to expectations and previous empirical observations, soldiers of both sexes showed more aggression towards more closely related embryos. We speculate that lower intra-brood relatedness indicates maternal outbreeding and may suggest a rarity of mating opportunities for reproductives maturing from the current brood, which may enhance the value of opposite sex brood-mates, or that higher aggression towards relatives may be a side-effect of mechanisms to discriminate heterospecific competitors.
Citation
Dunn, J., Dunn, D. W., Strand, M. R., & Hardy, I. C. (2014). Higher aggression towards closer relatives by soldier larvae in a polyembryonic wasp. Biology Letters, 10(5), Article 20140229. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2014.0229
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | May 8, 2014 |
Online Publication Date | May 1, 2014 |
Publication Date | May 28, 2014 |
Deposit Date | Mar 22, 2017 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 22, 2017 |
Journal | Biology Letters |
Electronic ISSN | 1744-957X |
Publisher | The Royal Society |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 10 |
Issue | 5 |
Article Number | 20140229 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2014.0229 |
Keywords | Aggression, Relatedness, Polyembryonic wasps |
Public URL | https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/728102 |
Publisher URL | http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/10/5/20140229.article-info |
Contract Date | Mar 22, 2017 |
Files
Dunn Dunn Strand Hardy Higher aggression towards closer relatives in a polyembryonic wasp Biology Letters 2014.pdf
(364 Kb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Copyright Statement
Copyright information regarding this work can be found at the following address: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Downloadable Citations
About Repository@Nottingham
Administrator e-mail: discovery-access-systems@nottingham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search