The police are not the army: Context-dependent aggressiveness in a clonal ant

Biology Letters

Volumn 6, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 329-332

  Barth, M Benjamin ^a,b   Kellner, Katrin ^a   Heinze, Jürgen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF REGENSBURG   (Germany)

^b MARTIN LUTHER UNIVERSITY HALLE WITTENBERG   (Germany)

Author keywords

Animal personalities; Behavioural syndromes; Colony fusion; Platythyrea punctata; Worker policing

Indexed keywords

AGGRESSION; ANT; BEHAVIORAL RESPONSE; CLONAL ORGANISM; COLONY FOUNDING; COLONY STRUCTURE; NEST GUARDING; WORKER POLICING;

ANIMALIA; HEXAPODA; PLATYTHYREA PUNCTATA;

EID: 77954107137     PISSN: 17449561     EISSN: 1744957X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0849     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. Bennett, N. C. & Faulkes, C. G. 2000 African mole-rats ecology and eusociality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
2. Bourke, A. F. G. 1988 Dominance orders, worker reproduction, and queen-worker conflict in the slave-making ant Harpagoxenus sublaevis. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 23, 323-333. doi:10.1007/BF00300579)
3. Brunner, E., Kellner, K. & Heinze, J. 2009 Policing and dominance behaviour in the parthenogenetic ant Platythyrea punctata. Anim. Behav. 78, 1427-1431. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav. 2009.09.022)
4. Cant, M. A. & Field, J. 2005 Helping effort in a dominance hierarchy. Behav. Ecol. 16, 708-715. doi:10.1093/beheco/ari051) (Pubitemid 41373589)
5. Cooney, R. 2002 Colony defense in Damaraland mole-rats, Cryptomys damarensis. Behav. Ecol. 18, 160-162. doi:10.1093/beheco/13.2.160)
6. Clutton-Brock, T. H. & Parker, G. A. 1995 Punishment in animal societies. Nature 373, 209-216. doi:10.1038/373209a0)
7. Field, J. & Cant, M. A. 2009 Social stability and helping in small animal societies. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 64, 3181-3189. doi:10.1098/rstb.2009. 0110)
8. Field, J., Cronin, A. & Bridge, C. 2006 Future fitness and helping in social queues. Nature 441, 214-217. doi:10. 1038/nature04560)
9. Frank, S. A. 1996 Policing and group cohesion when resources vary. Anim. Behav. 52, 1163-1169. doi:10. 1006/anbe.1996.0263)
10. Hartmann, A. & Heinze, J. 2003 Lay eggs, live longer: division of labor and life span in a clonal ant species. Evolution 57, 2424-2429.
11. Hartmann, A., Wantia, J., Torres, J. A. & Heinze, J. 2003 Worker policing without genetic conflicts in a clonal ant. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 100, 12836-12840. doi:10. 1073/pnas.2132993100)
12. Hartmann, A., Wantia, J. & Heinze, J. 2005a Facultative sexual reproduction in the parthenogenetic ant Platythyrea punctata. Insectes Soc. 52, 155-162. doi:10.1007/s00040-004-0786-5) (Pubitemid 40856508)
13. Hartmann, A., D'Ettorre, P., Jones, G. R. & Heinze, J. 2005b Fertility signaling-the proximate mechanism of worker policing in a clonal ant. Naturwissenschaften 92, 282-286. doi:10.1007/s00114-005-0625-1) (Pubitemid 40884005)
14. Heinsohn, R. & Legge, S. 1999 The cost of helping. Trends Ecol. Evol. 14, 53-57. doi:10.1016/S0169-5347 (98) 01545-6)
15. Heinze, J. & Hö lldobler, B. 1995 Thelytokous parthenogenesis and dominance hierarchies in the ponerine ant, Platythyrea punctata. Naturwissenschaften 82, 40-41. doi:10.1007/BF01167871)
16. Judd, T. M. 2000 Division of labor in colony defence against vertebrate predators by the social wasp Polistes fuscatus. Anim. Behav. 60, 55-61. doi:10.1006/anbe.2000.1449)
17. Kellner, K., Barth, B. & Heinze, J. In press. Colony fusion causes within-colony variation in a parthenogenetic ant. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.
18. Kitchen, D. M. & Beehner, J. C. 2007 Factors affecting individual participation in group-level aggression among non-human primates. Behaviour 144, 1551-1581. doi:10.1163/156853907782512074) (Pubitemid 350100385)
19. Korb, J. & Heinze, J. 2008 The ecology of social life: a synthesis. In Ecology of social evolution (eds J. Korb &-J. Heinze), pp. 245-259. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.
20. Kravitz, E. A. & Huber, R. 2003 Aggression in invertebrates. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 13, 736-743. doi:10.1016/j.conb. 2003.10.003)
21. Neumann, P., Radloff, S. E., Pirk, C. W. W. & Hepburn, R. 2003 The behaviour of drifted Cape honeybee workers (Apis mellifera capensis) : predisposition for social parasitism? Apidologie 34, 585-590. doi:10.1051/apido:2003048) (Pubitemid 38024755)
22. Pirk, C. W. W., Neumann, P. & Ratnieks, F. L. W. 2003 Cape honeybees, Apis mellifera capensis, police worker-laid eggs despite the absence of relatedness benefits. Behav. Ecol. 14, 347-352.
23. Ratnieks, F. L. W., Foster, K. R. & Wenseleers, T. 2006 Conflict resolution in insect societies. Annu. Rev. Entomol. 51, 581-608. doi:10.1146/annurev. ento.51.110104. 151003)
24. Réale, D., Reader, S. M., Sol, D., McDougall, P. T. & Dingemanse, N. J. 2007 Integrating animal temperament within ecology and evolution. Biol. Rev. 82, 291-318. doi:10.1111/j.1469-185X.2007.00010.x) (Pubitemid 46587935)
25. Rueppell, O., Chandra, S. B. C., Pankiw, T., Fondrk, M. K., Beye, M., Hunt, G. & Page, R. E. 2006 The genetic architecture of sucrose responsiveness in the honeybee (Apismellifera L.). Genetics 172, 243-251. doi:10.1534/genetics.105. 046490)
26. Schilder, K., Heinze, J. & Hö lldobler, B. 1999 Microsatellites reveal clonal structure of populations of the thelytokous ant Platythyrea punctata (F. Smith) (Hymenoptera; Formicidae). Mol. Ecol. 8, 1497-1507. doi:10. 1046/j.1365-294x.1999.00727.x)
27. Sih, A., Bell, A. & Johnson, J. C. 2004 Behavioral syndromes: an ecological and evolutionary overview. Trends Ecol. Evol. 19, 372-378. doi:10.1016/j.tree. 2004.04.009)
28. StatSoft Inc. 2001 STATISTICA (data analysis software system), v. 6. www.statsoft.com.
29. Stroeymeyt, N., Brunner, E. & Heinze, J. 2007 'Selfish worker policing' controls reproduction in a Temnothorax ant. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 61, 1449-1457. doi:10. 1007/s00265-007-0377-3)
30. Wenseleers, T., Tofilski, A. & Ratnieks, F. L. W. 2005 Queen and worker policing in the tree wasp Dolichovespula sylvestris. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 58, 80-86. doi:10.1007/s00265-004-0892-4) (Pubitemid 40600038)
31. Wilson, E. O. 1971 The insect societies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
32. Wolf, M., van Doorn, G. S., Leimar, O. & Weissing, F. J. 2007 Life-history trade-offs favour the evolution of animal personalities. Nature 447, 581-585. doi:10. 1038/nature05835)