How Many Parents Do the Wasps from a Fig Have?

Abstract

In three fruit crops of Costa Rican lowland deciduous forest figs, the mean number of pollinating agaonid female wasps which entered the figs was 1.07, 2.97, and 1.72 (93, 53, and 52 percent, respectively, of the figs received only 1 wasp). In these crops, the males would be quite likely to mate with their sisters since mating occurs in the fig before the newly emerged females leave. In one crop, there was a mean of 7.2 potential mothers per fig (maximum of 32 wasps per fig), and it would appear that the offspring within one of these figs would be of much more heterogeneous parentage. However, since the first wasps to enter the fig probably do most of the pollinating and ovipositing, I suspect that these figs also have only a few mothers for most of the offspring that they contain.