Current indirect fitness and future direct fitness are not incompatible.

Biol Lett

Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Karnataka 560012, India

Published: February 2018

In primitively eusocial insects, many individuals function as workers despite being capable of independent reproduction. Such altruistic behaviour is usually explained by the argument that workers gain indirect fitness by helping close genetic relatives. The focus on indirect fitness has left open the question of whether workers are also capable of getting direct fitness in the future in spite of working towards indirect fitness in the present. To investigate this question, we recorded behavioural profiles of all wasps on six naturally occurring nests of , and then isolated all wasps in individual plastic boxes, giving them an opportunity to initiate nests and lay eggs. We found that 41% of the wasps successfully did so. Compared to those that failed to initiate nests, those that did were significantly younger, had significantly higher frequency of self-feeding behaviour on their parent nests but were not different in the levels of work performed in the parent nests. Thus ageing and poor feeding, rather than working for their colonies, constrain individuals for future independent reproduction. Hence, future direct fitness and present work towards gaining indirect fitness are not incompatible, making it easier for worker behaviour to be selected by kin selection or multilevel selection.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5830658PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0592DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

indirect fitness
20
direct fitness
12
fitness
8
fitness future
8
future direct
8
fitness incompatible
8
independent reproduction
8
initiate nests
8
parent nests
8
nests
5

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!