Myrmecol. News 36: 243-253
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.25849/myrmecol.news_036:243
- Open Access: CC BY 4.0
- Year: 2026
- Title: Size-complexity relationships of ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) assemblages across an invaded region: a conceptual framework for sociometric trait analysis of eusocial insect invasions
- Journal: Myrmecological News
- Volume: 36
- Pages: 243-253
- Type of contribution: Original Article
- Supplementary material: No
- Abstract: The size-complexity relationship is characterized by the positive correlation between larger organismal size and increasing internal division of labor. This relationship is a key facet of life history research and often investigated within individual, free-living organisms. However, it is also applicable to animal societies, where size can be measured as group or colony size, and internal complexity can reflect differentiation among group or colony members. Size-complexity in social insect societies is under-explored as a factor potentially impacting ecological outcomes that span larger spatio-temporal scales than individual colonies or populations. Here we explore the potential impact that social complexity may have on an increasingly common ecological process – biological invasion by social insects, specifically ants. We posit that increasing social complexity may broadly contribute to the success of non-native ant species and thus be a useful way to better understand outcomes across invaded regions. Specifically, we asked whether non-native ants have different size-complexity relationships than native species in assemblages across the Southeastern United States. We analyze how colony size relates to a key axis of social complexity: queen-worker dimorphism. Queen-worker dimorphism is an important indicator of the degree of division of labor within colonies. Our results show that non-native ants increase in complexity as colony size increases at a greater rate than native ants. A consequence of this, when viewed at the scale of an increasingly invaded assemblage, is that the relationship between size and complexity increases the positive slope of the relationship. This shift, driven by the apparently greater size-complexity of non-native species, therefore, suggests that greater size-complexity is generally a trait of successfully established non-native species in this region and may broadly be contributing to the success of many common invasive ant species.
- Key words: Biological scaling, division of labor, eusocial, invasive species, land use, sociality, macroecology
- Publisher: The Austrian Society of Entomofaunistics
- ISSN: 1997-3500