Journal
JOURNAL OF ETHOLOGY
Volume 24, Issue 2, Pages 155-163Publisher
SPRINGER TOKYO
DOI: 10.1007/s10164-005-0176-0
Keywords
Cerceris arenaria; Nests aggregation; philopatry; space exploitation; social evolution
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Studying temporal and spatial changes of aggregations of digger wasps through nesting seasons is interesting because of its link to social evolution via a semi-social pathway, but information about this topic is scarce. An aggregation of Cerceris arenaria Latreille was studied during 1997-1999 and for a short period in 2001. The colony grew in area and number of nests through the first three seasons, but the aggregation reduced in 2001, and this decrease was confirmed by a count of nests made in 2003 and 2005. The positions of the nest entrances remained almost constant over the years, at least in high-nest-density areas, because of the repeated use of the same burrows from which they emerged. This fact permits the population to exploit for many years a restricted area and could act as a nest-density-regulation method for fossorial species that rarely dig new nests, preventing an excessive nest density. The newly emerged females did not dig new nests, showed a high philopatry in the choice of their first nest, and preferred to look for other nests to occupy close to the ones recently abandoned (mainly for an undergone usurpation by a conspecific female). Philopatry, along with lack of new nest digging and position-dependent nest choice, is probably an important factor maintaining spatial stability of the aggregation through the years and could represent a first step in the evolution of a higher sociality in apoid burrowing Hymenoptera.
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