Immune response in paper wasp workers: Task matters more than age

Published: 15 June 2026| Version 1 | DOI: 10.17632/m7mmzhpvbj.1
Contributors:
, Eduardo Fernando Santos, Helena Mendes Ferreira,
,
, Indrikis Krams, André Rodrigues de Souza

Description

This dataset accompanies the research article: Prato, A., Santos, E. F., Ferreira, H. M., Oi, C. A., do Nascimento, F. S., Rantala, M. J., Krams, I., & de Souza, A. R. (2024). “Immune response in paper wasp workers: Task matters more than age.” Journal of Insect Physiology, 154, 104629. This dataset contains the individual-level data and R code used to investigate how worker task and age influence the melanotic encapsulation immune response in the social paper wasp Polybia paulista. The study comprises three complementary experiments. The first experiment examined field workers collected from natural colonies. Individuals were classified according to behavioural task as cell inspectors or nurses, guards, or foragers. Relative worker age was estimated from the coloration of the transverse apodeme on the fifth sternite. Immune response was quantified by inserting a nylon filament into the body cavity and measuring the darkness of the melanized filament after 24 hours. The second experiment examined laboratory-reared workers of known absolute age that were prevented from developing normal behavioural specialization. These data were used to test whether melanotic encapsulation changes with age independently of worker task. The third experiment used marked workers of known age to test whether apodeme coloration provides a reliable proxy for worker age. The deposited files include raw and processed datasets, an Excel workbook containing the field and laboratory measurements, and an R script used to produce the statistical analyses and figures. The analyses include linear models, linear mixed-effects models, ANOVA, Tukey and estimated-marginal-means comparisons, and graphical representations of age, task and immune response.

Files

Steps to reproduce

1. Download and extract all deposited files into the same folder. 2. Open analyses_age_immuno_FINAL.R in R or RStudio. 3. Set the working directory to the folder containing the script and CSV files. 4. Install the required R packages if they are not already installed: ggplot2, multcompView, RColorBrewer, ggpubr, lme4, emmeans, effects, and ggeffects 5. Run the script from top to bottom. 6. Running the analyses reproduces: -the comparison between absolute age and apodeme coloration; -the distribution of worker tasks across relative-age categories; -the comparison of melanotic encapsulation among nurses or cell inspectors, guards and foragers; -the relationship between absolute age and melanotic encapsulation in laboratory workers; -the linear models, mixed-effects models and post-hoc comparisons reported in the manuscript.

Institutions

Categories

Ecology, Zoology, Immunology, Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Animal Behavior, Social Insect

Funders

Licence