Chernenko, A., Helanterä, H. & Sundström, L.

Colony kin structure and queen recruitment in the ant Formica fusca (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

The acceptance of extra queens in social insects changes colony kin structure and may reduce the inclusive fitness of workers. Nonetheless, colonies do not always reject intruding queens, although more so in colonies with high rather than low relatedness among colony members (e.g., mono- and polygyne colonies, respectively). This begs the question to what extent initially accepted queens come to reproduce in the colony and whether the outcome depends on colony kin structure regardless of the number of queens actually present in the colony. Here we test whether related daughter queens are more amenable for adoption than unrelated non-nestmate queens, whether acceptance is contingent on within-colony relatedness, and whether resident queens are favoured over new ones. We compared adoption and over-wintering survival of young queens of the facultatively polygyne black ant Formica fusca and found that nearly 100% of the introduced queens were killed or died within four months, whereas nearly all resident queens were retained regardless of colony kin structure. Contrary to our expectations based on inclusive fitness arguments, related daughter queens were not more eligible for adoption than unrelated prospective adoptees. Although colony kin structure had no effect on the tendency to adopt additional queens, dead queens were more often dismembered and thus presumably killed in high-relatedness than low-relatedness colonies.

Open access, licensed under CC BY 4.0. © 2012 The Author(s).

Facultative, monogyne, polygyne, relatedness, adoption, rejection, Formica, social.