Comprehensive Examination at CES on 20 July 2016 at 10:00 am titled "Spatial organization of individuals on the nest of the primitively eusocial wasp Ropalidia marginata" by Nitika Sharma from CES, IISc
The nest of social insects is considered the locus of their social lives. Although several ants and honeybees show site specific task performance; paper wasps usually are devoid of well-defined sites for task performance on their nest. It would be exciting to investigate thus, how and why wasps would organize themselves spatially on their nests in order to fulfill their reproductive and/ or non-reproductive motivations. Each female on the nest of Ropalidia marginata has several options at her disposal including 1. abandoning the parent nest and founding another, 2. joining another foundress, 3. waiting patiently to overthrow an existing queen to take over a fully functional colony or 4. gauging the meek chances of salvaging direct fitness throughout her life and retaining a sterile worker status to rely entirely on indirect fitness. In the light of the variety of strategies employed, we expect great variation in the space use patterns of these females. While this expectation was met, several more engaging questions arose.