Abstract
In the ant Pachycondyla villosa, new colonies are usually started cooperatively by two or more young queens who establish a dominance order with a division of labour. Co-founding can lead to primary polygyny, where queens stay together after workers have emerged. Here we show that two queens associations are the most common (47%) and also the most stable in the field. When offered additional nest ...
Abstract
In the ant Pachycondyla villosa, new colonies are usually started cooperatively by two or more young queens who establish a dominance order with a division of labour. Co-founding can lead to primary polygyny, where queens stay together after workers have emerged. Here we show that two queens associations are the most common (47%) and also the most stable in the field. When offered additional nest sites in the laboratory, two-queen associations did not split, whereas larger associations did so. We also show that solitary foundresses always accepted experimentally introduced alien queens, while these were attacked and sometimes killed in queen associations. The removal of dominant alpha queens from three-queen associations resulted in beta queens obtaining the dominant role and sometimes the destruction of the existing eggs. It appears that two queens suffice for a successful association and that pleometrosis is favoured by ecological constrains, such as nest-site limitation.
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