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Shifting foraging strategies in colonies of the social wasp Polybia occidentalis (Hymenoptera, Vespidae)

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Abstract

Social insect colonies can be expected to forage at rates that maximize colony fitness. Foraging at higher rates would increase the rate of worker production, but decrease adult survival. This trade-off has particular significance during the founding stage, when adults lost are not replaced. Prior work has shown that independent-founding wasps rear the first workers rapidly by foraging at high rates. Foraging rates decrease after those individuals pupate, presumably reducing the risk of foundress death. In the swarm-founding wasps, colony-founding units have many workers, making colony death by forager attrition less likely. Do swarm-founding wasps show similar shifts in foraging rates during the founding stage? We measured foraging rates of the swarm-founding wasp, Polybia occidentalis at four stages of colony development. At each stage, foraging rates correlated with the number of larvae present, which, in the founding stages, correlated with the number of cells in the new nest. Thus, foraging rates appear to be demand-driven, with the level of demand in the founding stage set by the size of nest that is constructed. During the founding stage, foraging rates per larva were high initially, suggesting that colonies minimize the development times of larvae early in the founding stage. Later in the stage, foraging rates decreased, which would reduce worker mortality until new workers eclose. This pattern is similar to that shown for independent-founding wasps and likely results from conflicting pressures to maximize colony growth and minimize the risk of colony death by forager attrition.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Werner Hagnauer Ausclerau, the late Lilly Bodmer Giger, Jorge Hagnauer Bodmer, and Verena Hagnauer de Leigh for allowing us to work on their property and for generous logistical support. Our thanks go to Paul Hanson at the Universidad de Costa Rica, San Pedro, for providing chemicals and logistical support. Specimens were collected under the auspices of the Escuela de Biología and the Museo de Insectos of the Universidad de Costa Rica. Andy Bouwma, Lee Clippard, Cristie Hurd, Jenny Jandt, and Sainath Suryanarayanan provided helpful discussion in planning stages and analysis of results. We thank Peter Krump for his assistance in writing the SAS programs. Research supported by a NSF pre-doctoral fellowship travel grant to K.J. Howard, NSF grant no. IBN9514010 to R.L. Jeanne, and by the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and the Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, Madison. The experiments performed comply with the current laws of Costa Rica.

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  1. Kenneth J. Howard

    Present address: 546 Russell Labs, 1630 Linden Dr., Madison, WI 53706, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA

    Kenneth J. Howard

  2. Department of Entomology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA

    Robert L. Jeanne

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  1. Kenneth J. Howard
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  2. Robert L. Jeanne
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Correspondence to Kenneth J. Howard.

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Communicated by J. Heinze

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Howard, K.J., Jeanne, R.L. Shifting foraging strategies in colonies of the social wasp Polybia occidentalis (Hymenoptera, Vespidae). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 57, 481–489 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-004-0871-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-004-0871-9

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