Overview
- UCL-led findings published in Animal Behaviour and reported Tuesday show that removing the queen from Polistes canadensis colonies triggers immediate, intense fights among multiple females and a rapid collapse of the colony’s usual social network.
- Researchers observed that, despite the violence, colonies did not fall apart because a subset of wasps — called compensators — avoided conflict and increased essential work such as collecting food and caring for larvae.
- Compensators prevented brood starvation by sustaining foraging and nest tasks while others competed for dominance, which kept colony function intact during the succession scramble.
- The compensator individuals displayed no clear biological differences from fighting wasps, suggesting their role comes from flexible behavioural choices rather than fixed castes.
- The study combined experimental queen removals with a reanalysis of field data collected in Panama in the early 2000s and was funded by NERC and the Smithsonian, prompting new questions about how flexible labour allocation shapes social stability in other species.