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Sex allocation in the solitary bee Osmia cornuta: do females behave in agreement with Fisher's theory?

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Abstract

Fisher's theory of sex allocation predicts that, in a panmictic population, parental investment will be equally distributed between male and female progeny. Most studies on parental investment in nesting solitary bees and wasps use offspring or provision weight as estimators of parental investment and do not corroborate Fisher's theory. The measurement of parental investment may be confounded by several factors. First, the use of offspring or provision size does not account for seasonal variation in foraging costs associated with aging of nesting females. Second, provision or offspring size do not reflect parental investment associated with nest construction. In this two-year study we measured parental investment in a solitary bee. We calculated sex allocation using both provision weight and foraging time as parental investment estimators. Investment in pollen-nectar provisions decreased, while investment in mud structures (nest construction) increased, as the nesting period progressed. Overall investment in provisions per nest was ∼25 times higher than investment in mud. Pollen-nectar foraging trips became longer as the season progressed, but mud trip duration did not vary. Due to weather differences between years, more offspring per female were produced in the first year, but progeny sex ratio and mean offspring size of both sexes were similar between years. Mortality did not differ between sexes. As predicted by Fisher's theory, production cost ratios did not differ from 1 in either year, irrespective of the currency used to estimate parental investment (provision weight or foraging time). Our results strongly support Fisher's theory.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the owners of the Sant Daniel farm for allowing us to work in their property. We are grateful to J. Juanola for assistance with night counts, and to J. Calzadilla, M. A. Escolano, M. López and V. H. Monzón for their generous help with nest dissection and analysis. E. García (Universitat de Girona) and X. Picó (CREAF, Barcelona) provided advice and stimulating discussions during different phases of the study. V. J. Tepedino (USDA-ARS, Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory), T. Roulston (University of Virginia) and J. Retana (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) reviewed a draft of the manuscript, and made suggestions for its improvement. This study was supported by the DGICYT (project AGR. 91-0988-CO3) and by a FPI grant from the Spanish MEC to N. Vicens, and complies with current laws in Spain

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unitat Ecologia-CREAF, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Spain

    Jordi Bosch

  2. Biology Department, Utah State University, Logan, UT, 84322-5310, USA

    Jordi Bosch

  3. Department Biologia Animal, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028, Barcelona, Spain

    Jordi Bosch & Narcís Vicens

Authors
  1. Jordi Bosch
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  2. Narcís Vicens
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Correspondence to Jordi Bosch.

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Communicated by R.F.A. Moritz

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Bosch, J., Vicens, N. Sex allocation in the solitary bee Osmia cornuta: do females behave in agreement with Fisher's theory?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 59, 124–132 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-005-0017-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-005-0017-8

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