Abstract
Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) of social insects have typically been studied for their roles in reproductive signaling (i.e., fertility) rather than sexual signaling (i.e., interest in mating), resulting in little information about CHCs of males and virgin females. This dearth of information applies particularly to social wasps. We tested the hypothesis that CHCs differentiate sex, caste, and nest membership in each of four yellowjacket species (baldfaced hornets, Dolichovespula maculata; southern yellowjackets, Vespula squamosa; western yellowjackets, V. pensylvanica; V. alascensis). Cold-euthanized queens (21), gynes (81), workers (125), and males (77) from 35 nests were extracted with pentane, and each of the resulting 304 extracts was analyzed by gas chromatography (GC) and GC–mass spectrometry to identify and quantify CHC constituents (aliphatic alkanes and alkenes; mono-, di-, and tri-methyl-branched alkanes). To determine whether caste and sex differ in CHC profiles of wasps, linear discriminant analyses were performed, using Z-transformed relative CHC peak areas as predictor variables and sex and caste, or nest, as grouping variables. When caste and sex were used as a grouping variable, plots of the first two discriminant functions revealed that wasps from each of the four species clustered into their respective groups (queens, gynes, workers, males), with significant differences in group centroids, as measured by Wilks’ lambda. When nest was used as a grouping variable, plots of the first two discriminant functions revealed that workers from each of the four species and males from each of three species (insufficient sample size for V. pensylvanica) clustered according to nest. Diagnostic power calculations show greater inter-caste than inter-nest variation. Our data support the above hypothesis and inspire future studies to determine the definitive role(s) that gyne- and male-specific CHCs play in the context of sexual communication, from the perspective of both males and females.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Alejandro Córdoba-Aguilar, Alejandro Daniel Camacho Vera, Alejandro Zaldívar-Riverón, and María Cristina Mayorga Martínez, as well as the Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biológicas from the Instituto Politécnico Nacional and the Instituto de Biología and Instituto de Ecología from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, for their advice and support in acquiring the permits (SGPA/DGVS/10989/14 dated 04 Nov 2014, SGPA/DGVS/12972/14 dated 09 Dec 2014, SAGARPA 4090687366 dated 05 Dec 2014) from the Mexican federal authorities SEMARNAT and SAGARPA, and for access to entomological museums to find V. squamosa populations; citizens of the municipality of Santiago Apoala, Oaxaca, for their support in locating V. squamosa nests and for facilitating field research on their properties. The research was supported by Graduate Fellowships from Simon Fraser University to ND, and by an NSERC—Industrial Research Chair to GG, with Scotts Canada Ltd. as the industrial sponsor.
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Derstine, N.T., Gries, R., Zhai, H. et al. Cuticular hydrocarbons determine sex, caste, and nest membership in each of four species of yellowjackets (Hymenoptera: Vespidae). Insect. Soc. 65, 581–591 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-018-0649-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-018-0649-0