Data from: Heritable variation in color patterns that mediate 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 color patterns that mediate individual recognition. Previous experimental and comparative studies have provided evidence that color pattern diversity is the result of selection for individuals to advertise their identity. Distinctive identity-signaling 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 color pattern diversity used for facial recognition in a wild population of Polistes fuscatus wasps. We find that color patterns are heritable and not Mendelian, suggesting that multiple loci are involved. Additionally, patterns of genetic correlations among traits indicate that at many of the loci underlying color pattern variation are unlinked and independently segregating. Our results support a model where the benefits of being recognizable maintain genetic variation at loci that code for phenotypic diversity used for recognition.