Sight in a Clique, Scent in Society: Plasticity in the Use of Nestmate Recognition Cues Along Colony Development in the Social Wasp Polistes dominula

Nestmate recognition, i.e. the ability to discriminate nestmates from foreign individuals, is a crucial feature of insect societies and it has been traditionally considered to be predominantly based on chemical cues. Recent empirical evidence however suggests a relevant plasticity in the use of different communication channels according to cue availability and reliability in different contexts. In particular, visual cues have been shown to...