title: Facial markings in the social cuckoo wasp Polistes sulcifer: No support for the visual deception and the assessment hypotheses.
abstract: Insect social parasites have to conquer a host colony by overcoming its defensive barriers. In addition to increased fighting abilities, many social parasites evolved sophisticated sensory deception mechanisms to elude host colonies defenses by exploiting host communication channels. Recently, it has been shown that the conspicuous facial markings of a paper wasp social parasite, Polistes sulcifer, decrease the aggressiveness of host foundresses. Two main hypotheses stand as explanations of this phenomenon: visual sensory deception (i.e. the black patterning reduces host aggression by exploiting the host visual communication system) and visual quality assessment (i.e. facial markings reduce aggressiveness as they signal the increased fighting ability of parasites). Through behavioral assays and morphological measurements we tested three predictions resulting from these hypotheses and found no support either for the visual sensory deception or for the quality assessment to explain the reduction in host aggressiveness towards the parasite. Our results suggest that other discrimination processes may explain the observed phenomenon.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Firenze, Via Madonna del Piano 6, Sesto Fiorentino, 50019 Firenze, Italy. Electronic address: cini.ale@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cini
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Firenze, Via Madonna del Piano 6, Sesto Fiorentino, 50019 Firenze, Italy.
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ortolani
authors.affiliation: Center for Integrative Physiology, Euan MacDonald Center for Motor Neuron Disease Research, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zechini
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Firenze, Via Madonna del Piano 6, Sesto Fiorentino, 50019 Firenze, Italy.
authors.forename: Rita
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cervo
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression; D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D008192:Deception; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D010271:Parasites / Q000502:physiology*; D012858:Size Perception; D012919:Social Behavior; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D014863:Wasps / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Assessment; Sensory deception; Social parasitism; Social wasps; Visual communication