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The social wasps hold secrets about the balance in complex societies. When a queen is missing, the colony experiences chaos that does not necessarily imply its end.
Scientists from the United Kingdom discovered that, in the midst of the crisis, there are individuals from the colony of red paper wasps, Pascuero or carán who sustain the life of the group, according to the results they published in the journal Animal Behaviour.
They showed that the disappearance of the queen unleashed power struggles and social disorder, but some wasps responded with greater dedication to vital tasks. Thus, the colony located in Panama overcame the conflict. British scientists discover that some wasps assume vital functions to sustain the colony during the leadership crisis (UCL) The research was conducted by Owen Corbett and his team, with the support of University College London, the Institute of Zoology of the Zoological Society of London, the ELGO-DIMITRA Animal Science Institute of Greece, and the Biomedical Research Center Alexander Fleming.We recommend reading:A 'radioactive wasp' nest found in a former nuclear facility in the U.S.
The fieldwork was done in Panama and received support from the Smithsonian Institution and the UK's Natural Environment Research Council.Without a Queen, Without Order: The War for the Throne
The study led by Owen Corbett reveals how aggression and competition dominate queen succession in social wasps (Ricardo Arredondo Naturalist) Despite its scientific name, the wasp Polistes canadensis does not inhabit Canada. Its distribution ranges from southern Arizona and the southeastern United States to northern Patagonia, with presence in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and much of South America. The colonies of that wasp species function under a cooperative structure where reproduction falls to a single dominant female. The rest of the workers do not lose the ability to reproduce and can aspire to leadership if the queen disappears. The researchers focused on understanding how the colony responds to this rupture. The underlying problem was how such organized societies face a succession marked by aggression, without clear rules or rigid hierarchies. Previous studies in temperate zone species had shown predictable and ordered systems, but the red paper wasps represented a different case, with succession marked by direct competition.While some fight, others feed
The research in Panama was supported by University College London and several international zoology and animal science institutions (UCL) The research was conducted in wild colonies of the Panama Canal Zone. Each wasp received paint marks to track its movements before and after the disappearance of the queen. Aggressive interactions between females increased when several wasps competed for reproductive dominance, and the colony's usual social networks quickly crumbled. The colony went through phases of extreme conflict. Aggression multiplied tenfold compared to usual, and it was not possible to anticipate who would be the new queen based on the previous behavior of the candidates. The succession involved a period of intense conflict in which many members of the group participated. Red paper wasps show a chaotic succession, different from that of species from temperate zones with more predictable hierarchies (Jon Arias Naturalist) What happened next was the most revealing part of the study. While some wasps fought for leadership, others — which the researchers called “compensators” — left the nest for the first time to look for food. The provisioning behavior and affiliate social networks were maintained thanks to less active individuals who took on foraging roles. These two strategies coexisted at the same time within the same nest. Those who fought spent more time inside, focused on the dispute. The compensating ones went out more, got food, and fought less. Most of the compensators had never left the nest before. It wasn't a gradual change: it was a direct response to the crisis. Owen Corbett, lead researcher of the study, said: “While some individuals fought for dominance, others avoided conflict altogether and quietly got to work keeping the colony running. Cooperation didn't disappear; it was redistributed.”To measure who dominated whom, the researchers used the Elo scoring system, a statistical tool that assigns scores based on the outcome of each confrontation between individuals. Aggression networks became denser and less linear after the queen disappeared.
The chaos that still holds questions
While part of the colony fights for leadership, other wasps called 'compensators' maintain foraging and feeding tasks (Alfonso Gutiérrez Aldana Naturalist) After the results, the researchers suggested investigating why only some species developed this type of compensatory mechanism. Researchers warned that they measured foraging as a reflection of offspring care, but that it would be necessary to directly track the survival of offspring during these periods of conflict.You can also read: A study rules out that the Asian hornet increases deaths from stings
About a third of the wasps remained inactive at all times, which raises questions about what role those individuals play in the dynamics of the nest. Seirian Sumner, lead researcher and co-author, opined that "understanding how animal societies manage conflict can help us think differently about cooperation in broader terms. In times of turmoil, society depends on those who continue to do the essential work in the background. In many ways, we may resemble wasps more than we think."
