Data from: Heritable variation in colour patterns mediating individual recognition

Understanding the developmental and evolutionary processes that generate
and maintain variation in natural populations remains a major challenge
for modern biology. Populations of Polistes fuscatus paper wasps have
highly variable colour patterns that mediate individual recognition.
Previous experimental and comparative studies have provided evidence that
colour pattern diversity is the result of selection for individuals to
advertise their identity. Distinctive identity-signalling phenotypes
facilitate recognition, which reduces aggression between familiar
individuals in P. fuscatus wasps. Selection for identity signals may
increase phenotypic diversity via two distinct modes of selection that
have different effects on genetic diversity. Directional selection for
increased plasticity would greatly increase phenotypic diversity but
decrease genetic diversity at associated loci. Alternatively, heritable
identity signals under balancing selection would maintain genetic
diversity at associated loci. Here, we assess whether there is heritable
variation underlying colour pattern diversity used for facial recognition
in a wild population of P. fuscatus wasps. We find that colour patterns
are heritable and not Mendelian, suggesting that multiple loci are
involved. Additionally, patterns of genetic correlations among traits
indicated that many of the loci underlying colour pattern variation are
unlinked and independently segregating. Our results support a model where
the benefits of being recognizable maintain genetic variation at multiple
unlinked loci that code for phenotypic diversity used for recognition.