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      Neighbourhood Society: Nesting Dynamics, Usurpations and Social Behaviour in Solitary Bees

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          Abstract

          Intraspecific cleptoparasitism represents a facultative strategy advantageous for reducing time and energy costs. However, only a few studies about nesting dynamics have described intraspecific cleptoparasitic behaviour in obligate solitary bees. We focused on nesting dynamics with the characterisation of nest owner replacements and frequency of true usurpation in four aggregating species belonging to different phylogenetic lineages – Andrena vaga (Andrenidae), Anthophora plumipes (Apidae), Colletes cunicularius (Colletidae), and Osmia rufa (Megachilidae). Our study, based on the regular observation of individually marked females, shows that nest owner replacement affects 10–45% of nests across all of the studied species and years. However, 39–90% of these nests had been abandoned before owner change and thus true nest usurpations represent only a part of observed nest replacement cases. Females tend to abandon their nests regularly and found new ones when they live long enough, which is in accordance with risk-spreading strategy. We suggest that the original facultative strategy of observed solitary bees during nest founding is not cleptoparasitism per se but rather reuse of any pre-existing nest (similar to “entering” strategy in apoid wasps). This is supported by gradual increase of nests founded by “entering” during the season with an increase in the number of available nests. Although the frequent reuse of conspecific nests results in frequent contact between solitary females, and rarely, in the short-term coexistence of two females in one nest, we detected unexpectedly low level of conflict in these neighbourhood societies. We suggest that nesting dynamics with regular nest switching and reusing reduces long-term and costly intraspecific aggression, a key factor for the origin and evolution of sociality.

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          Social parasitism by male-producing reproductive workers in a eusocial insect.

          The evolution of extreme cooperation, as found in eusocial insects (those with a worker caste), is potentially undermined by selfish reproduction among group members. In some eusocial Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps), workers can produce male offspring from unfertilized eggs. Kin selection theory predicts levels of worker reproduction as a function of the relatedness structure of the workers' natal colony and the colony-level costs of worker reproduction. However, the theory has been only partially successful in explaining levels of worker reproduction. Here we show that workers of a eusocial bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) enter unrelated, conspecific colonies in which they then produce adult male offspring, and that such socially parasitic workers reproduce earlier and are significantly more reproductive and aggressive than resident workers that reproduce within their own colonies. Explaining levels of worker reproduction, and hence the potential of worker selfishness to undermine the evolution of cooperation, will therefore require more than simply a consideration of the kin-selected interests of resident workers. It will also require knowledge of the full set of reproductive options available to workers, including intraspecific social parasitism.
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            Nautural selection for within-generation variance in offspring number.

            In this paper it is shown that natural selection can act on the within-generation variance in offspring number. The fitness of a genotype will increase as its variance in offspring number decreases. The intensity of selection on the variance component is inversely proportional to population size, although the fixation probability of a gene which differs from its allele only in the variance in its offspring number is independent of population size. The concept of effective population size is shown to be of limited use when there is genetic variation in the variance in offspring number.
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              Evolutionarily stable nesting strategy in a digger wasp.

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2013
                16 September 2013
                : 8
                : 9
                : e73806
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
                [2 ]Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
                University of Freiburg, Germany
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: KČ JS. Performed the experiments: KČ LM ZK JS. Analyzed the data: MZ KČ. Wrote the paper: KČ JS.

                Article
                PONE-D-13-02289
                10.1371/journal.pone.0073806
                3774747
                24066074
                ecbbe8dd-6ce5-4e34-b1fd-f822c1b7b2d9
                Copyright @ 2013

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 16 January 2013
                : 24 July 2013
                Page count
                Pages: 9
                Funding
                This project was supported by the Czech Science Foundation ( www.gacr.cz), project no. P506/10/0403. Support to KČ was given by the SVV (Specific University Research) project no. SVV-2013-265206. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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