• Title of article

    How many soldiers are optimal for an aphid colony?

  • Author/Authors

    Aoki، نويسنده , , Shigeyuki and Kurosu، نويسنده , , Utako، نويسنده ,

  • Issue Information
    روزنامه با شماره پیاپی سال 2004
  • Pages
    5
  • From page
    313
  • To page
    317
  • Abstract
    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 rm/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.
  • Keywords
    Aphid soldier , logistic model , Nash equilibrium , Optimal strategy
  • Journal title
    Journal of Theoretical Biology
  • Serial Year
    2004
  • Journal title
    Journal of Theoretical Biology
  • Record number

    1536594