Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 12) INFOCUS Family Dynamics of Yellow Jackets “Social insects such as yellow jackets have been described as one of the greatest achievements of evolution because of the incredible cooperative nature of their societies,” says Michael Goodisman, an assistant professor in the School of Biology who studies family dynamics within a colony. “I wanted to know why the females would risk this cooperative nature by having multiple partners” and if there would be fighting between subfamilies. “Weird things can start happening within families.” Goodisman wondered if yellow jacket workers would kill new queens that had a different father or if they were more likely to turn their sister larvae into reproducing queens instead of sterile workers. The results from DNA fingerprinting showed that males fathered an equal number of queens and workers, leading Goodisman to believe there is no conflict within a colony because of multiple mating. He also found that a benefit to the colony for each queen having multiple partners is that it is more successful. Another avenue of Goodisman’s research is to investigate how yellow jacket development leads to a caste system with queens, males and workers — each with a different role in the colony. “The division of labor has made these animals so incredibly successful in cooperative behaviors, but workers and queens are genetically the same,” says Goodisman, who found that certain genes are turned on or off to create the different castes. He also is intrigued by decision making within a colony. “We want to know who’s telling the workers to stop making more workers and start making queens, so we’re studying the life cycle of yellow jacket colonies. Is it an environmental cue or possibly a cue from the queen?” >>> Photo: Gary Meek 12 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Spring 2008
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