Abstract
Key structures of insects, such as their mandibles, become worn by the use and this leads to performance constraints, increase of metabolic costs, and decrease of individual’ both lifespan and survival. Studying this phenomenon is interesting in species that build nests as it demands a significant amount of mandible labor; however, the effect of this selective factor is less obvious in species like social vespids that perform different tasks at different ages. By comparing mandible wear between individuals of different ages in 18 colonies of 13 species of neotropical social wasps (Vespidae: Polistinae), we aimed to understand (1) the distribution of mandible wear across ages, and (2) the association between colony size and the coefficient of variation of mandible wear as an indicator of specialization. Despite a general positive trend between mandible wear and age, there are numerous exceptions and no age seems to concentrate this phenomenon. Mandible wear variation was evenly distributed throughout the worker ages, and was not correlated with colony size. Our study suggests that individuals distribute mandible demanding tasks throughout their life to reduce structural attrition which may improve worker’s general output. We proposed that, to extend both life expectancy and general performance of the workers, wasps may spread the more demanding tasks over longer and less intense periods.
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(raw mandible wear data) Dryad https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.6q573n5x6, and (CV, colony data and mandible wear) Dryad https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.ffbg79csk.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Diana Maritza Monroy for her help during the first phase of the research as well as Joan Sebastian Joya for his help in nests collection, R.B. Jeanne for insightful comments on the early versions of the manuscript, P.K. Piekarski and R. Menezes for sharing their molecular phylogenies, Cristian Román-Palacios for his suggestions, members of the Laboratorio de Sistemática y Biología Comparada de Insectos for their comments on the research, volunteers who graded tooth wear, and the Laboratorio de Microscopía Electrónica de la Universidad Nacional for technical support. Many thanks to the Universidad Nacional de Colombia that provided continuous support for this research through Hermes project code 16632. Dr. Th. Defler reviewed the writing. We thank the referees and editors for their insightful comments.
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This research was partially supported by the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Hermes project code 16632.
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JJL-O: methodology (equal); data curation (leading); formal analysis (equal); writing-original draft (equal); writing-review and editing (equal).CES: conceptualization (leading); methodology (equal); data curation (equal); formal analysis (equal); writing-original draft (equal); writing-review and editing (equal).
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Lagos-Oviedo, J.J., Sarmiento, C.E. Task specialization and structure attrition: neotropical social wasps may disperse the cost of mandible demanding labors throughout their lives. Zoomorphology 140, 269–278 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00435-021-00527-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00435-021-00527-3