Nitika Sharma: Reproductive heirs in multilayer social networks of primitively eusocial paper wasps

Описание: Nitika Sharma (University of California Los Angeles) presents at the Women in Network Science seminar on Novemerb 25, 2020.

Bio: Nitika Sharma, PhD, is a postdoctoral scholar at UCLA who has started working on multilayer networks of tropical paper wasps and vultures recently. She did her PhD from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India on the spatial organization of tropical paper wasps within their nests.

Abstract: Reproduction provides direct fitness benefits, therefore, it is important to determine why in some societies certain individuals have disproportionate access to reproductive opportunities. In many social systems, reproductive hierarchy is determined by aggression, age, genetics, or physiology. The social interactions that underly reproductive hierarchies can occur in multiple situations, yet they are rarely studied in unison. The reproductive heir in the social wasp, Ropalidia marginata, remains cryptic until the queen dies or disappears. To determine if a reproductive heir can be identified through her behavior, we examined four types of social interactions: aggression, spatial overlap, and exchange of solid or liquid food. We asked if accounting for all four social situations in a multilayer network provides more information about the structure of the society than examining each situation on its own, or in an aggregate network that does not distinguish between social situations. We found that the reproductive heir had the most social interactions in the multilayer network, but not in each of the social situations when considered separately, or when all situations were lumped together. Our work demonstrates that multilayer networks can uncover new insights on social organization by explicitly considering the links between multiple situations of social interactions.