Behaviour and Social Evolution of Wasps The Communal Aggregation Hypothesis

About this book

The author presents data on tropical wasps which suggest that kin-selection has been overemphasised as an evolutionary explanation of sociality. He concentrates on the Vespidae (Paper wasps and hornets), and reports field observations by himself and others in Central America, Asia, and Australia. This book should be of interest to all students of ecology, evolution and behaviour.

Contents

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.

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