Information gathering and conflict resolution in Polistes wasps

The paper wasp Polistes dominulus is unique among the social insects in that nearly one-third of co-foundresses arecompletely unrelated to the dominant individual whose offspring they help to rear and yet reproductive skew is high. Theseunrelated subordinates stand to gain direct fitness through nest inheritance, raising the question of whether their behaviouris adaptively tailored towards maximizing inheritance prospects. Unusually, in this species, a wealth of theory and empiricaldata allows us to predict how unrelated subordinates should behave. Based on these predictions, here we compare helpingin subordinates that are unrelated or related to the dominant wasp across an extensive range of field-based behaviouralcontexts. We find no differences in foraging effort, defense behaviour, aggression or inheritance rank between unrelatedhelpers and their related counterparts. Our study provides no evidence, across a number of behavioural scenarios, that thebehaviour of unrelated subordinates is adaptively modified to promote direct fitness interests. Citation: Leadbeater E, Carruthers JM, Green JP, van Heusden J, Field J (2010) Unrelated Helpers in a Primitively Eusocial Wasp: Is Helping Tailored Towards DirectFitness? PLoS ONE 5(8): e11997. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011997Editor: James Arthur Robert Marshall, University of Bristol, United KingdomReceived January 22, 2010; Accepted July 8, 2010; Published August 6, 2010Copyright: ! 2010 Leadbeater et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permitsunrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Funding: This research was supported by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant NE/E017894/1 to Jeremy Field. The funders had no role in studydesign, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.* E-mail: [email protected]