Abstract
Social aggression is a pervasive feature of insect societies. In eusocial Hymenoptera, aggression among females can affect task performance and competition over direct reproduction (egg laying); in most species males participate in social interactions relatively rarely. Males of the independent-founding paper wasp Mischocyttarus mastigophorus are exceptional: they are aggressive toward female nestmates, leading us to explore the function of this unusual behavior. We applied social network analyses to data on M. mastigophorus social aggression to quantify sex differences in giving and receiving social aggression. The network analyses supported the pattern of biased male aggression toward female nestmates; females are relatively rarely aggressive to males. We then asked whether male aggression toward females was biased by females’ relative ovary development. Males were more aggressive toward females with better-developed ovaries, opposite to patterns of aggression among females. Because food brought to the colonies is often monopolized by dominant females, we suggest that males direct aggression toward socially dominant females with better-developed ovaries to obtain food. The implications of biased male aggression for female task performance and physiology are unknown.
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Behavioral data for generating the social networks and ovary development data will be published with the MS as supplementary files.
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S. O’D. wrote the MS and performed statistical analyses; KF and RC performed the social network analyses and edited the MS.
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Research permits for field work were obtained from the Costa Rican Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mines (to Francis J. Joyce Jr.).
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O’Donnell, S., Fiocca, K. & Congdon, R. Social Network Analysis of Male Dominance in the Paper Wasp Mischocyttarus mastigophorus (Hymenoptera: Vespidae). J Insect Behav 34, 106–113 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-021-09774-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-021-09774-0