Social Biology of Ropalidia Montana, Award in Indian Currency

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Description: This project partially supports field expenses for two U.S. scientists, Dr. James Hunt and Dr. Robert Jeanne of the Department of Biology, Universiy of Missouri, St. Louis, while conducting research in India in collaboration with Dr. R. Gadagkar of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. In the research, work will be done on Ropalidia montana, one of the social wasps of the tropics. It is of considerable interest as one of very few species of social paper wasps to have discrete queen/worker dimorphism. The research will address the following questions: 1. does the species have an alarm pheromone and what is its source, 2. do the wasps use chemicals to mark trails during swarm emigration, 3. do male and female larvae yield different quantities of saliva during food exchange with adults, 4. how do larvae escape their pupal cells, and 5. what is the apparent pattern of task partitioning by forager worker wasps?. This work will involve selection of a wasp colony and removing it from its natural habitat on high trees to an area of shrubs where observations can be made more easily. Scope: This small grant will provide funds for the two U.S. scientists to conduct research of interest, to the U.S., in the area of population biology and with the collaboration of their host at one of India's prestigeous academic and research institutes. Funds for travel to India were made available to the scientists from other sources. This research complements work being done by Dr. Hunt under a grant BSR8805971 from the Population Biology Program on "Nourishment, Trophallaxis and Caste in Primitvely Social Wasps".