How many soldiers are optimal for an aphid colony?

A number of aphid species produce sterile soldiers that defend their colony-mates against predators. How many soldiers should a colony produce? Assuming logistic growth of the aphid colony, we can theoretically deduce that soldiers will be produced until the marginal defensive efficacy of a soldier...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of theoretical biology Vol. 230; no. 3; pp. 313 - 317
Main Authors Aoki, Shigeyuki, Kurosu, Utako
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England Elsevier Ltd 07.10.2004
Subjects
Animals
Aphid soldier
Aphididae
Aphids
Logistic model
Logistic Models
Models, Biological
Nash equilibrium
Optimal strategy
Social Environment
Nash equilibrium
Optimal strategy
Aphid soldier
Logistic model
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Summary:A number of aphid species produce sterile soldiers that defend their colony-mates against predators. How many soldiers should a colony produce? Assuming logistic growth of the aphid colony, we can theoretically deduce that soldiers will be produced until the marginal defensive efficacy of a soldier diminishes to r m / K, a ratio of two exogenous variables of the logistic equation, which are the maximum intrinsic rate of increase and carrying capacity. This conclusion holds true irrespective of the number of founders. As the number of founders increases, the entire colony size becomes larger, thus decreasing the percentage of soldiers. In case of multiple founders, each clone will produce the same number of reproductives that remain on the hostplant.
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ISSN:0022-5193
1095-8541
DOI:10.1016/j.jtbi.2004.05.019