James H Hunt

Complex problems in evolutionary biology can be approached in two ways, top down using theoretical constructs and bottom up using empirical studies . Theoretical concepts predominate evolutionary interpretations of eusociality in a literature that is small relative to an enormous literature of natural history and basic research that is not synthesi...

Darwin famously described special difficulties in explaining social evolution in insects. More than a century later, the evolution of sociality - defined broadly as cooperative group living - remains one of the most intriguing problems in biology. Providing a unique perspective on the study of social evolution, this volume synthesizes the features...

Social insects exhibit striking phenotypic plasticity in the form of distinct reproductive (queen) and non-reproductive (worker) castes, which are typically driven by differences in the environment during early development. Nutritional environment and nourishment during development has been shown to be broadly associated with caste determination ac...

An area of great interest in evolutionary genomics is whether convergently evolved traits are the result of convergent molecular mechanisms. The presence of queen and worker castes in insect societies is a spectacular example of convergent evolution and phenotypic plasticity. Multiple insect lineages have evolved environmentally induced alternative...

The distinction between worker and reproductive castes of social insects is receiving increased attention from a developmental rather than adaptive perspective. In the wasp genus Polistes, colonies are founded by one or more females, and the female offspring that emerge in that colony are either non-reproducing workers or future reproductives of th...

Vibrations and sounds, collectively called vibroacoustics, play significant roles in intracolony communication in termites, social wasps, ants, and social bees. Modalities of vibroacoustic signal production include stridulation, gross body movements, wing movements, high-frequency muscle contractions without wing movements, and scraping mandibles o...

Chemical messengers are the primary mode of intracolony communication in the majority of social insect species. Chemically transmitted information plays a major role in nestmate recognition and kin recognition. Physical and behavioral castes often differ in chemical signature, and queen effects can be significant regulators of behavior and reproduc...

Here we report field observations of group hunting by two Neotropical species of paper wasps, Parachartergus apicalis in Costa Rica and Agelaia cf. angulata in Peru. In both cases, multiple workers simultaneously attacked live caterpillar prey. We describe the wasps' behavior and their interactions with the relatively large-bodied (>80 mm length) c...

In a model based on the wasp family Vespidae, the origin of worker behaviour, which constitutes the eusociality threshold, is not based on relatedness, therefore the origin of eusociality does not depend on inclusive fitness, and workers at the eusociality threshold are not altruistic. Instead, incipient workers and queens behave selfishly and are...

Recent advancements in genomics provide new tools for evolutionary ecological research. The paper wasp genus Polistes is a model for social insect evolution and behavioral ecology. We developed RNA interference (RNAi)-mediated gene silencing to explore proposed connections between expression of hexameric storage proteins and worker vs. gyne (potent...

Polistes paper wasps are models for understanding conditions that may have characterized the origin of worker and queen castes and, therefore, the origin of paper wasp sociality. Polistes is "primitively eusocial" by virtue of having context-dependent caste determination and no morphological differences between castes. Even so, Polistes colonies ha...

Two occurrences are described in which a Polistes paper wasp of one species took up residence on a nest built by and containing the brood of a different Polistes species. These observations are placed in the context of previous reports of shared nesting, intraspecific and interspecific nest usurpation, and intraspecific and interspecific adoption o...

In order to gain insights into the mechanistic basis of caste and behavioral differences in Polistes paper wasps, we examined abdominal lipid stores and ovary development in Polistes metricus females in four groups: foundresses, queens, workers, and gynes. Queens had the largest ovaries, followed by foundresses, workers, and gynes. Gynes had 6x hig...

The presence of workers that forgo reproduction and care for their siblings is a defining feature of eusociality and a major challenge for evolutionary theory. It has been proposed that worker behavior evolved from maternal care behavior. We explored this idea by studying gene expression in the primitively eusocial wasp Polistes metricus. Because l...

Colonies of social wasps, ants, and bees are characterized by the production of two phenotypes of female offspring, workers that remain at their natal nest and nonworkers that are potential colony reproductives of the next generation. The phenotype difference includes morphology and is fixed during larval development in ants, honey bees, and some s...

Social behavior occurs in some of the smallest animals as well as some the largest, and the transition from solitary life to sociality is an unsolved evolutionary mystery. The Evolution of Social Wasps examines social behavior in a single lineage of insects, wasps of the family Vespidae. It presents empirical knowledge of social wasps from two appr...

Eusocial wasps of the family Vespidae are thought to have derived their social behavior from a common ancestor that had a rudimentary caste-containing social system. In support of this behavioral scenario, the leading phylogenetic hypothesis of Vespidae places the eusocial wasps (subfamilies Stenogastrinae, Polistinae, and Vespinae) as a derived mo...

A novel hypothesis for the origin of castes in Polistes has recently been proposed: the worker and gyne castes among offspring of a Polistes colony are based on the underlying ground plan of reproductive physiology that would have characterized the non-diapause and diapause generations of a bivoltine solitary vespid wasp. Here the hypothesis is rev...

To learn the evolutionary trajectories of caste differentiation in eusocial species is a major goal of sociobiology. We present an explanatory framework for caste evolution in the eusocial wasp genus Polistes (Vespidae), which is a model system for insect eusocial evolution. We hypothesize that Polistes worker and gyne castes stem from two developm...

Previous authors have called attention to nest form variation between and within species of the Neotropical swarm-founding polistine wasp genus Parachartergus. One author characterized nests oriented horizontally and having the nest comb petiole central and in-line with nest cells as anomalous, and he suggested that anomalous nests constrain coloni...

A field population of Polistes metricus Say near St. Louis, Missouri was supplemented with dilute Apis mellifera honey and Trichoplusia ni caterpillars during the entire colony development period. Offspring were collected at two times to coincide with emergence of worker and reproductive broods. Food supplementation had no effect on nest size, th...

Wasps of family Vespidae contain three types of major proteins that have the size, amino acid composition, subunit composition, immunological reactivity, and pattern of occurrence characteristic of storage proteins. The three types of storage protein, which have been identified in other Hymenoptera, are very high density lipoprotein, high glutamine...

Abstract 1. Colony survivorship and numbers of nest cells, pupae, and adult females were monitored throughout the nesting season for a cohort of 78 colonies of the paper wasp Polistes metricus Say. Thirty-nine colonies received a twice-weekly nourishment supplement of honey during pre-emergence and early emergence phases of the colony cycle; 39 col...

The effects of food quantity on the morphology and development of the paper wasp Polistes metricus Say are studied, and experimental results are compared with predictions of the parental manipulation hypothesis. Food deprivation led to smaller female offspring. By hand feeding larvae we used a technique that counteracts the queen's hypothesized abi...

Specimens of Vespula squamosa (Drury) collected in Honduras from 1992 through 2000 demonstrate an extension of the known range of Vespinae in Central America.

In northwestern Costa Rica, Agelaia yepocapa (Richards) nests in cavities within living hollow trees in lower montane mesic forests; A. panamaensis (Cameron) nests in very large cavities in premontane gallery forests. Nests of both species have vertical combs with horizontal cells that face outward from the nest center; the nests have no enclosing...

5 Department of Biology University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, U.S.A. djanzen@sas.upenn.edu

The multiple independent origins of eusociality in the insect order Hymenoptera are clustered in only four of more than 80 families, and those four families are two pairs of closely related taxa in a single part of the order. Therefore, although ordinal-level characteristics can contribute to hymenopteran eusocial evolution, more important roles ha...

The multiple independent origins of eusociality in the insect order Hymenoptera are clustered in only four of more than 80 families, and those four families are two pairs of closely related taxa in a single part of the order. Therefore, although ordinal-level characteristics can contribute to hymenopteran eusocial evolution, more important roles ha...

Previous investigators have questioned the temporal occurrence, biochemistry, and nutritional use of honey sometimes present in nests of some social polistine wasps. Honey of species in the genera Polistes and Polybia contains diverse amino acids. Inositols (alicyclic polyalcohols) also are present in the honey of both genera; quercitol was the mos...

Collection records and observations reveal noteworthy distribution records of several social wasp species in Missouri, U.S.A. The paperwasp Polistes exclamans Viereck has diminished in abundance in eastern Missouri; the adventive European hornet, Vespa crabro L., apparently extended its range into Missouri in the late 1980's and early 1990's: a sin...

During colony defense, workers of several species of Neotropical swarm-founding wasps hold the distal tip of the abdomen erect in a behavior here termed gaster-flagging. Gaster-flagging can be accompanied by various combinations of wing fanning, waving of the gaster, and extrusion of the sting. Workers flag their gasters while perched either on or...

Queens of the social, swarm-founding wasp Epipona guerini are larger than workers in each of 13 morphometric variables. Multivariate analyses revealed that 6 of the variables contribute significantly to queen-worker differentiation. Relationships among thorax length, wing length, and width of the second gastral tergite differ between queens and wor...

Colonies and nests ofApoica pallens in the llanos region of Venezuela range from small foundress nests to large mature colonies. Nests are sited on small diameter, near-horizontal branches in a variety of shrub and tree species. During the day, adult wasps cluster on the face of the nest in an array that seems to be determined by orientation to gra...

Experimental tests on Agelaia multipicta in Venezuela and A. hamiltoni in Peru failed to demonstrate recruitment of nestmates to carrion. Foraging ranges of neighboring colonies overlap and foragers occasionally showed aggression when they encountered one another on the baits. These species appear to engage in scramble competition with congeners an...

In order to derive quantitative estimates of predation rate from serological gut analysis data, one must have an estimate of the interval during which a meal can be detected after feeding. In practice this has turned out to be ‘Dmax,’ defined as ‘...the time from finishing a meal until that meal could just no longer be detected in any individuals.’...

A dense aggregation of 866 nests of a solitary mud daubing wasp, Sceliphron assimile Dahlbom, was censused at Hacienda La Pacifica near Ca n ¯ as, Guanacaste Province, Costa Rica. The data were treated to yield both cohort and stage life tables. Nests had 1-26 cells. The number of cells per nest was used as an index of minimum female reproductive l...

Four colonies ofRopalidia montana collected in August in the Nilgiri Hills of southern India had adult populations of 32,000-61,000. Queens represented 0·46–1·40% of the populations. All colonies contained males, but in widely varying proportions (1·47–27·00%). The large adult populations and the fact that the nests were largely filled with brood i...

Polistes metricus Say (Hymenoptera: Vespidae, Polistinae) field colonies were supplemented with dilute honey during the pre‐emergence and early post‐emergence phases of colony development. Supplementation did not increase number of nest cells constructed or rates of loss to predation or foundress disappearance compared with controls. Colonies recei...

The kinds, rates of acquisition, inter-individual transfers, and intra-colonial movements of nutrients were ascertained for the advanced eusocial paper wasp Polybia occidentalis (Olivier). Foraging worker wasps (“foragers”) bring arthropod prey and nutritive liquids (“nectar”) to the nest, and these are usually transferred to nest workers (“receive...

Trypsin-like and chymotrypsin-like enzyme activities are present in midguts of adult workers, gynes, and males of the hornetVespa crabro germana Christ. The chymotrypsin-like enzyme is the more abundant; both enzymes have activities that are linear over time. The chymotrypsin-like enzyme is inhibited by inhibitors specific for mammalian chymotrypsi...

Summary In the laboratory, femalePolistes metricus on recently collected nests malaxated larval provisions containing radioactive fructose. Recovery of radioactivity from the adults showed that they extracted substantial liquid or semisolid material from the provision morsel during malaxation. The extracted material was held in the crop, and it cou...

Levels of activity of a chymotrypsin-like enzyme in midguts of adult worker honeybees (Apis mellifera) from 2 hives were measured over a 3-year period. The principal between-year pattern was one of higher levels in winter than in either fall or spring. Considerable variation in enzymatic activity was found. Spearman rank correlation analysis of the...

The exchange of alimentary liquid among individuals of a social species has been recognized for more than two centuries as a promi- nent aspect of hymenopteran biology. wheeler (1918) coined the term trophallaxis, which is now widely and generally used in reference to Lhis behavior. lJilson (1971), Spradbery (1973), and Jeanne (1980) have given rec...

Forager (older) worker honeybees typically have lower midgut activity levels of chymotrypsin and trypsin than do house (younger) worker honeybees. A relation between the age correlated enzymic change and an age correlated decrease in pollen consumption is not clearly demonstrable.

Pollens of plant taxa known to be visited by bees were analyzed in vitro for the presence of four enzymic activities: trypsin-like, chymotrypsin-like, carboxypeptidase A-like, and carboxypeptidase B-like. All pollens examined contained at least chymotryptic activity; other activities were irregular in occurrence. Quantities of the enzymes found are...

Summary MalePolistes fuscatus fed malaxated prey to larvae, with feeding behaviors similar in major aspects to females feeding larvae. A single instance of larval feeding by a maleP. metricus is also reported, and literature references to other observations of male social wasps feeding larvae are summarized.

Two nests ofPolistes paper wasps were occupied simultaneously by two species. One of the nests had been founded by a third species. Joint nest use has not been previously observed inPolistes, and it is not accommodated by genetic theories of hymenopteran social evolution.Nous avons trouv 2 nids de Gupes du genrePolistes qui taient occups par des in...

Adults of Vespula germanica and V. maculifrons were examined for digestive protease activities. All caste members of both species that were analysed possessed trypsin, chymotrypsin, carboxypeptidase A, and carboxypeptidase B-like activities, with one exception: worker V. maculifrons lacked carboxypeptidase B activity. Adults of these two species ca...