USURPATION AND DOMINANCE BEHAVIOR 
IN THE POLYGYNOUS SOCIAL WASP 
METAPOLYBIA CINGULATA 
(HYMENOPTERA: VESPIDAE: POLYBIINI) 1 
By Adrian B. Forsyth 
Museum of Comparative Zoology Laboratories, Harvard University, 
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 
Introduction 
Usurpation is facultative intraspecific social parasitism. The term 
“usurpation” was first proposed by Yoshikawa (1955) to denote the 
process in which a female social insect invades a colony of the same 
species, kills or dominates the resident reproductive female and as- 
sumes her reproductive role. It has been postulated that usurpation 
behavior represents the first step in the evolution of the more ad- 
vanced classes of interspecific social parasitism in wasps (Taylor, 
1939; Wilson, 1971). However, usurpation behavior remains poorly 
studied relative to interspecific social parasitism and has been de- 
scribed in detail only twice (Janet, 1903; Yoshikawa, 1955). De- 
tection of usurpation requires the observation of marked colonies and 
this probably accounts for the paucity of data related to usurpation. 
With reference to energy management, usurpation is an aggressive 
analogue of the cleptoparasitic reproductive strategy employed by 
many solitary wasps, flies, and scarab beetles. The usurping queen 
gains a nest and often a worker force to aid in rearing her own 
offspring. Hence there is an obvious selective advantage to usurpa- 
tion which is presumably opposed by the probability of being killed 
by the resident queen or worker wasps. However, it is not clear 
what the stimuli involved in illiciting usurpation actually are. The 
loss of a nest or the failure to gain the alpha position in a dominance 
hierarchy are obvious possibilities. 
Previous observations of usurpation have not included data on 
the prior behavior of the usurping females and have been confined 
to temperate monogynous species. There have been no reports of 
usurpation or social parasitism in polygynous wasps such as the 
Polybiini in spite of an a priori higher expectation of cheating and 
deception in polygynous systems relative to monogynous systems. 
Published with the aid of a grant from the Museum of Comparative 
Zoology. 
Manuscript received by the editor November 25, 1975. 
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