title: Facial patterns in a tropical social wasp correlate with colony membership.
abstract: Social insects excel in discriminating nestmates from intruders, typically relying on colony odours. Remarkably, some wasp species achieve such discrimination using visual information. However, while it is universally accepted that odours mediate a group level recognition, the ability to recognise colony members visually has been considered possible only via individual recognition by which wasps discriminate 'friends' and 'foes'. Using geometric morphometric analysis, which is a technique based on a rigorous statistical theory of shape allowing quantitative multivariate analyses on structure shapes, we first quantified facial marking variation of Liostenogaster flavolineata wasps. We then compared this facial variation with that of chemical profiles (generated by cuticular hydrocarbons) within and between colonies. Principal component analysis and discriminant analysis applied to sets of variables containing pure shape information showed that despite appreciable intra-colony variation, the faces of females belonging to the same colony resemble one another more than those of outsiders. This colony-specific variation in facial patterns was on a par with that observed for odours. While the occurrence of face discrimination at the colony level remains to be tested by behavioural experiments, overall our results suggest that, in this species, wasp faces display adequate information that might be potentially perceived and used by wasps for colony level recognition.
authors.affiliation: Université Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Laboratoire d'Ethologie Expérimentale et Comparée, 93430, Villetaneuse, France. david.baracchi@gmail.com.|Biological and Experimental Psychology, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK. david.baracchi@gmail.com.
authors.forename: David
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1308-0612
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Baracchi
authors.affiliation: Università degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Biologia, Via Madonna del Piano 6, Sesto Fiorentino, Italy.
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Turillazzi
authors.affiliation: Biological and Experimental Psychology, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK.
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chittka
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D005145:Face / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006838:Hydrocarbons / Q000032:analysis; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009812:Odorants / Q000032:analysis; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D012919:Social Behavior; D014863:Wasps / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D006838:Hydrocarbons
keywords: Face recognition; Individual recognition; Insect cognition; Nestmate recognition; Visual signals