title: Self assessment in insects: honeybee queens know their own strength.
abstract: Contests mediate access to reproductive opportunities in almost all species of animals. An important aspect of the evolution of contests is the reduction of the costs incurred during intra-specific encounters to a minimum. However, escalated fights are commonly lethal in some species like the honeybee, Apis mellifera. By experimentally reducing honeybee queens' fighting abilities, we demonstrate that they refrain from engaging in lethal contests that typically characterize their reproductive dominance behavior and coexist peacefully within a colony. This suggests that weak queens exploit an alternative reproductive strategy and provides an explanation for rare occurrences of queen cohabitation in nature. Our results further indicate that self-assessment, but not mutual assessment of fighting ability occurs prior to and during the agonistic encounters.
authors.affiliation: Department of Zoology and Entomology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa.
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Dietemann
authors.forename: Huo-Qing
authors.initials: HQ
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Colleen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hepburn
authors.forename: H Randall
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Hepburn
authors.forename: Shui-Hua
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.forename: Robin M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Crewe
authors.forename: Sarah E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Radloff
authors.forename: Fu-Liang
authors.initials: FL
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Christian W W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Pirk
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D005260:Female