A network analysis of dominance and colonial activity in Mischocyttarus metathoracicus (Hymenoptera: Vespidae)

Abstract

Social insects are excellent models of biological systems in which interactions performed by individuals have an outcome of dynamic patterns of connections. Dominance hierarchy is one of the social systems better understood in several groups of animals and exerts the function of social structure regulator on group activities. Eussocial wasps of the subfamily Polistinae present totipotent castes with a hierarchical social organization based on dominance and subordinate interactions. Dominance hierarchy not only determines reproductive work, it also has an influence on the regulation of other tasks such as parental care, colony defense, and foraging. Thus, we propose to use as model species the wasp Mischocyttarus metathoracicus and Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools to (1) investigate dominance hierarchy ontogeny, transitivity degree of dominance interactions as well as to characterize whether hierarchy fits into linear, despotic or shared; (2) to test whether bursts of activity are regulated by the queen or in a decentralized way and (3) to correlate behavioral profile, morphophysiological features such as body size, age, ovarian development and spermathecal contents to dominant succession process. The present study aims to add knowledge about biological complex systems of organization as well as about behavior and biology of neotropical eusocial wasps. (AU)