Social Parasites

12/4/12

Our run of beautiful weather has now been broken. Rain has set in again today so not marking or censusing!

However, I found a social parasite on one nest yesterday and went to pick up the culprit in question this morning to remove her.

P. semenowi is a social parasite of P. dominulus. These parasites invade the nest of they host species and are thought to have evolved a epicuticular hydrocarbon pattern similar to P. dominulus. After invasion they mimic the odour of their hosts so as not to stand out from the crowd and be accepted. They then take over the nest as the dominant individual laying eggs and getting their parasitised host to carry out brood care. Check out this paper for some more info if you are interested (Lorenzi et al 2004 - Parasitology).

To the untrained eye they generally look pretty similar to one another and it is only when you have a closer look at they faces that you can really see and difference. Here you can see a photo of both species faces to show the difference.

P. dominulus is the little cute one with a yellow face that looks like she is wearing sunglasses were as P. semenowi is the evil looking on with large jaws and a black face (also dead now and looking like she is doing some weird yoga pose!)