Biometric Comparison of Body Size between Queens and Workers in New Guinean Swarm-founding Ropalidia.

• KOJIMA Jun-ichi

  Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Ibaraki University

• KOJIMA Kumiko

Bibliographic Information

Other Title

• ニューギニア産分巣種チビアシナガバチにおける女王とハタラキパチ聞の体サイズの数量比較

Abstract

Body size was compared between queens and workers in two New Guinean swarmfoudning Ropalidia species, R. bambusae and R. leopoldi. Queens of R. bambusae tended to have longer mesosoma and larger metasoma than workers. Although the canonical discriminant analysis using nine morphological characters showed that there was only partial overlap between queens and workers, respective characters of them overlapped considerably if compared separately. Queen/worker size ratio within a colony for the mesosomal length was 1.02, which was smaller than inter-colonial difference. Although only one queen and seven workers were available for R. leopoldi, there seem to be distinct size dimorphism in this species. Queen/worker size ratio for mesosomallength was 1.16, and this value was comparable to that in R. montana, which has been known to represent distinct female caste dimorphism.

Journal

• Tropics

  Tropics 4 (1), 49-55, 1994

  JAPAN SOCIETY OF TROPICAL ECOLOGY

Keywords

• swarm-founding
• Ropalidia
• female castes
• size dimorphism

Details

• CRID: 1390282679400102656
• NII Article ID: 10012398338
• NII Book ID: AN10528811
• DOI: 10.3759/tropics.4.49
• ISSN: 18825729
• ISSN: 0917415X
• Web Site: http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/tropics/4/1/4_1_49/_pdf
• Text Lang: en
• Data Source:
  • JaLC
  • Crossref
  • CiNii Articles
• Abstract License Flag: Disallowed