Meeting Abstract
The founding individuals of a new group or lineage are uniquely poised to have long-lasting effects on their descendants. Here we explore how the behavioural traits of new paper wasp queens influence their task allocation strategies and the downstream collective behavior of their colonies. We then test to see whether these personality traits matter in the field by tracking the success of queens of known behavioral type and size over an entire season. From these data, we are able to determine how personality and morphology influences colony growth and survival in the wild.
