Thursday, 3 August 2006: 1:30 PM-6:00 PM
Executive (Omni Shoreham Hotel)
Symposium 19: Caste Interactions and Social Reproduction
Reproduction in colonies of highly social insects is a collective activity that is orchestrated through complex interactions between workers and reproductives. These interactions can contain elements of both cooperation and conflict, and together may determine the outcome of reproductive events. However, we often have a limited understanding of the social regulation of colony reproduction. In this symposium, we present a series of theoretical and empirical studies from ants, honey bees, and stingless bees that explore how caste interactions influence social reproduction. We examine how workers influence investment ratios and queen behavior, and how these mechanisms may reflect conflict and cooperation among castes. We also explore how queens influence the behavior of workers during reproduction and how these mechanisms may affect social organization. Our goal is to provide an up-to-date overview of the proximate and ultimate factors that organize caste interactions and social reproductive decisions.
Organizers:Stanley S. Schneider
David Tarpy
1:30 PM206Queen replacement in honey bees: another system for investigating the social regulation of colony reproduction
David R. Tarpy
1:50 PM207Skew Selection Explains the Evolution of an Altruistic Caste in the Social Hymenoptera
Deby L. Cassill
2:10 PM208Aggression Patterns of Worker Honey Bees Towards a Foreign Queen: Experiments and a Mathematical Model
Wyatt A. Mangum, Suzanne Sumner
2:30 PM209Caste and reproduction in the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius
Christopher R. Smith
2:50 PM210Proximate cues in the supersedure of honey bee, Apis mellifera, queens
Jeffery S. Pettis
3:10 PM211How should founding queens react to worker discrimination in young social insect colonies?
Michael T. Balas
3:30 PM Break
4:00 PM212Worker Regulation of Queen Behavior during Swarming and Queen Replacement in Honey Bees
Stanley S. Schneider
4:20 PM213Caste interactions and social reproduction in Meloponini: insights from Melipona bicolor bicolor
Vera Lucia Imperatriz Fonseca, Dirk Koedam
4:40 PM214Effect of mating number on honey bee queen pheromone profiles, physiology, and worker-queen interactions
Freddie-Jeanne Richard, David Tarpy, Christina Grozinger
5:00 PM215Half worker, half queen: Egg-laying intermorphs in Crematogaster smithi ant colonies
Jan Oettler, Jürgen Heinze
5:20 PM216Queen volatiles and their possible role in worker-queen interactions
Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, David Gilley, Judith Hooper
5:40 PM217Subcaste Morphology and Behavioral Plasticity in a Community of Tropical Pheidole
Amy L. Mertl, James F.A. Traniello
Sponsor:Invited Symposia Presentations

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