Anna Kohl
Research Mentor: Joseph Caldwell
Mentor Department: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, LSA
Author(s): Anna Kohl, Joseph Caldwell
Session: Session 3 (11:00 AM – 11:50 AM)
Presentation Type: Poster 93
Abstract
Behavior is an important part of animals’ lives. Animals use their behavior to choose mates, avoid predators, forage for resources, and function in social groups. As such, it is believed that individual variation in behavior affects the fitness of animals in the wild. Understanding the fitness consequences of individual variation in behavior is a major goal of biologists. However, it is often logistically challenging to document behavior in wild animals over their lifetimes. Polistes, Paper wasps, provide an ideal opportunity to study the effects of natural behavior on fitness because they have large social groups, short lifespans, and live on open nests. Together, these qualities allow us to study natural behavior and the lifetime reproductive success of individuals in the field. My project focused on wasps from 60 wild nests across southeast Michigan. These wasps were individually marked for identification. Each nest was video recorded for one hour each week over the entire summer of 2025. I helped review over 400 hours of wasp nest videos, and quantified individual behaviors using an ethogram (a behavior catalog). The ethogram included aggressive, cooperative, and foraging behaviors. Additionally, we scored nest images to determine the fitness of the queen wasps. Fitness was measured using the number of offspring and total nest size. Ultimately, we used this data to link individual behavioral counts to proxies of fitness to better understand the consequences of individual variation in behavior.
