User talk:Sean Comeau/sandbox

Laura's peer review

Overall, this provides a good summary of the concept of pleometrosis, and the evolutionary costs and benefits that influence its development in ants.

Introduction

- You mention that bees, wasps, and termites also display pleometrosis in the introduction, but then do not mention them again in the article. It may be useful to provide examples of pleometrosis in these species as well. Are there differences/similarities in how pleometrosis occurs in different groups, or any interesting examples?

- You say “This behavior is of significant interest to scientists particularly in ants because nest formation happens between queens that are unrelated ruling out the argument of inclusive fitness as the driving force of Pleometrosis.”

      - Why ants in particular? Are you saying that pleometrolic queens are unrelated in ants, but not in other species?

- “Multiple queens at the start of colony formation can be seen as disadvantageous evolutionary because multiple queens can cause genetic variation in the colony and competition between each of the queens.”

      - Why is having genetic variation in the colony a negative consequence? 
      
      - Also, to clarify, disadvantageous for whom? The individual queen or the entire population of ants in colony? 

- I would avoid using “we see”, and “this leads us to believe” – makes it sound like you are personally involved in the research

Inter-colony competition causing Pleometrosis

- Good overview of inter-colony competition, and how multiple queens allows faster, more efficient colony formation.

- You say the driving selection pressure is inter-colony competition. Unless this is the only influencing factor, I’d make sure to say “one of the principle driving selection pressures is…” or similar

- Could use some clarification in general. For example, how the additional queens reduce inter-colony competition, foraging time, etc.

- Use of concluding sentence was helpful for tying ideas together

Cost/Benefit of Pleometrosis formation

- Good summary of how the queens compete against each other, but could be clearer on the benefits of having multiple queens in the first place

- Maybe provide a little more information/examples of colonies in which pleometrosis outlasts the initial colony formation

- “As the number of queens in a pleometrolic colony increases the chances of each queen becoming the dominant queen in the colony lower, but still selection pressures chose pleometrosis over haplometrosis[3].”

      - Is pleometrosis always favoured? Presumably, there are also cases where haplometrosis occurs.

      - What are the benefits for the workers for pushing out the extra queens?