Relatedness and altruism in Polistes wasps

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Abstract
Genetic relatedness is expected to play a crucial role in the evolution of altruistic behaviors such as worker behavior in the social insects. If individuals sacrifice their own reproduction, then the genes for this sacrifice will be lost unless these individuals aid the reproduction of others who share the genes. This leads to the prediction that altruism should be most common in species with high relatedness among potential beneficiaries. Here we report an attempt to test for such an association. We estimated both the incidence of altruism and the relatedness to potential beneficiaries in foundresses of seven species of paper wasps. The predicted positive correlation was not found, and we conclude that factors other than relatedness are more important in determining interspecific differences in the incidence of altruism.

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