A society’s success can hinge on its head honcho. That’s true even for insects under the rule of a queen.
One way to judge the success of social insects such as paper wasps is by the size of their colonies, with bigger typically meaning better. Polistes metricus paper wasp queens with bold personalities and big bodies tend to produce larger colonies than their smaller, shyer counterparts, a new study finds. These queenly characteristics can help to predict a colony’s success, even a month before there’s even a colony to speak of, says Colin Wright, a behavioral ecologist at Penn State.
Colony-founding P. metricus paper wasp queens blaze their own trails. These females often strike out alone, build their own nests and raise their young. Once they’ve reared a brood, they defend the nest from invaders while policing workers’ behavior and preventing workers from reproducing.
In May 2016, Wright and colleagues collected 40 paper wasp queens and their nests, within a couple of weeks of the females founding the nests. The researchers gave the insects a “personality” test by poking them in the face, up to 50 times, to see if the wasps would stay put or fly away.