Yoshiaki Ito, Yosiaki Ito, Yosiaki It?

Behaviour and Social Evolution of Wasps

The Communal Aggregation Hypothesis

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In this book, Ito presents data on tropical wasps which suggest that kin-selection has been overemphasized as an evolutionary explanation of sociality. He concentrates on the Vespidae (paper wasps and hornets), a group much discussed by evolutionary biologists because it exhibits all stages of social evolution: subsociality, primitive eusociality, and advanced eusociality. The author reports field observations by himself and others in Central America, Asia, and Australia, showing that multiple egg-layers in a nest are not uncommon. Because coexistence of many 'queens' leads to lower relatedness among colony members than in single-queen colonies, he suggests that kin-selection may not be the most powerful force determining observed social patterns. Instead, subsocial wasps may first have aggregated for defense purposes in habitats with a high risk of predation, with mutualistic associations among many queens. Through parental manipulation and then kin selection, differentiation into within-generation castes may have followed. Of interest to all students of ecology, evolution, and behavior, this book beautifully demonstrates the author's ability to combine wide-ranging data with thoughtful questions.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: OUP Oxford
• Seitenzahl: 168
• Erscheinungstermin: 4. Februar 1993
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 156mm x 9mm
• Gewicht: 266g
• ISBN-13: 9780198540465
• ISBN-10: 0198540469
• Artikelnr.: 21257412

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction
Systematics and sociality of wasps
Theories on the evolution of eusociality
Problems with the kin-selection hypothesis
Comparison of dominance relations and proportion of multi-female nests in the Polistinae
Ropalidia fasciata in Okinawa, Japan
a species with flexible social relations
Social relations in wasp colonies in the wet tropics
Polistine wasps in Panama
Role of miltuple comb construction and perennial nature of nests: Polistine wasps in Australia
Multi-queen societies: swarm-founding wasps in the tropics
Social lives of the other social wasps
Origin of pleometrosis: altruism or mutualism?
Manipulation of progeny by mother groups: an hypothesis for the evolution of multi-queen societies
Kin-selection and multi-queen social systems
Conclusion
References
Index.