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Regional variation in queen and worker aggression in incipient colonies of the desert ant Messor pergandei

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Abstract

The fate of queen foundress associations in ants varies across taxa: in some, lethal fighting results in survival of a single queen, while in others, queens coexist long term. One hypothesis for this difference is that selection favors fighting when group sizes are small and tolerance when groups are large. In an experiment with the ant Messor pergandei, we formed small, medium, and large groups with newly mated queens from field populations that have different mean group sizes and differ in whether multiple queens occur in older established colonies. We found that whether queens are eliminated by fighting depends upon region of origin and not group size: regardless of co-foundress number, queens from sites with single-queen adult field colonies displayed agonistic behaviors and their colonies reduced to a single queen, while queens from sites with multiple-queen colonies did not fight and co-foundresses coexisted long term. Worker aggression towards and elimination of queens were also correlated with region of origin. Where fighting occurred, queens were as likely to be killed by workers as by other queens. An aggressive display was the most common form of agonistic interaction among queens, while fighting was relatively rare. We hypothesize that queen displays evolved in response to worker attacks because they increase the probability that workers will eliminate competitor queens. Our results suggest that the evolutionary interests of workers, as well as queens, could be important in determining the evolution and maintenance of queen elimination in foundress associations.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Heather Axen for help in the laboratory. For permission to collect queens, we thank the National Park Service (Death Valley National Park) and Phil Smith of the Arizona Game and Fish Department. This research was supported by a grant from the US National Science Foundation, DEB 0742922.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, 05405, USA

    Ken R. Helms, Nathaniel J. Newman & Sara Helms Cahan

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  1. Ken R. Helms
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  2. Nathaniel J. Newman
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  3. Sara Helms Cahan
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Correspondence to Ken R. Helms.

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Communicated by J. Heinze

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Appendix 1

Appendix 1

Table 5 Initial sample sizes with the number of nests that successfully produced workers and their mean queen group size at that point in time. Group size following worker production is lower than initial group size due to queen mortality prior to worker production
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Helms, K.R., Newman, N.J. & Helms Cahan, S. Regional variation in queen and worker aggression in incipient colonies of the desert ant Messor pergandei . Behav Ecol Sociobiol 67, 1563–1573 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-013-1568-8

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