The price of insurance: costs and benefits of worker production in a facultatively social bee

Wyatt A Shell, Sandra M Rehan and Luke HolmanHandling Editor

Behavioral Ecology, 2018, vol. 29, issue 1, 204-211

Abstract: Selection on traits that maximize maternal fitness represents a recurrent mechanism underlying early evolutionary transitions towards social organization. We use genetic and demographic data to perform a cost-benefit analysis comparing alternative reproductive strategies in a bee capable of both subsocial and social nesting. We find that, while alloparental care provides few fitness benefits for worker daughters, social nesting is an advantageous strategy by way of assured fitness returns to social mothers.

Keywords: assured fitness returns; Ceratina; facultative sociality; inclusive fitness; maternal manipulation; Social evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arx146 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:29:y:2018:i:1:p:204-211.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().