Evolutionary Ecology: Wasp Mother's Little Helpers
نویسندگان
چکیده
The medical application of antibiotics dramatically reduced human infant mortality in the previous century. A new study indicates that ground nesting wasps exploit Streptomyces strains that they rear in their antennae for the same purpose.
منابع مشابه
Reproductive constraints, direct fitness and indirect fitness benefits explain helping behaviour in the primitively eusocial wasp, Polistes canadensis.
A key step in the evolution of sociality is the abandonment of independent breeding in favour of helping. In cooperatively breeding vertebrates and primitively eusocial insects, helpers are capable of leaving the group and reproducing independently, and yet many do not. A fundamental question therefore is why do helpers help? Helping behaviour may be explained by constraints on independent repr...
متن کاملPolymorphic microsatellite loci for primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata.
We report here development and characterization of 48 novel microsatellite markers for Ropalidia marginata, a tropical, primitively eusocial polistine wasp from peninsular India. Thirty-two microsatellites showed polymorphism in a wild population of R. marginata (N = 38) collected from Bangalore, India. These markers will facilitate answering some interesting questions in ecology and evolutiona...
متن کاملWomen's work, child care, and helpers-at-the-nest in a hunter-gatherer society.
Considerable research on helpers-at-the-nest demonstrates the positive effects of firstborn daughters on a mother's reproductive success and the survival of her children compared with women who have firstborn sons. This research is largely restricted to agricultural settings. In the present study we ask: "Does 'daughter first' improve mothers' reproductive success in a hunting and gathering con...
متن کاملEvolutionary theory and the human family.
Emlen's (1995) paper "An evolutionary theory of the family" reviewed existing ideas about the nature of family systems and the reasons why they have evolved in certain animal species. His theorizing led him to propose 15 predictions about how family systems function, based on favorable evidence from various species, mostly birds. While he suggested that these predictions can be applied to the h...
متن کاملHelping effort in primitively eusocial wasps
In primitively eusocial and cooperatively breeding societies, there is substantial individual variation in helping effort that is not accounted for by variation in genetic relatedness. In primitively eusocial wasps, helpers have a significant chance of inheriting breeding positions. Recent models suggest that because helpers with greater expected future fitness have more to lose, they should in...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
- Current Biology
دوره 15 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2005