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Termite’s royal cradle: does colony foundation success differ between two subterranean species?

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Abstract

Colony foundation modes play a key role in social insect societies as they strongly impact colony survival. In subterranean termites, we do not yet know which factors most influence the early stages of colony foundation since studies on the topic are scarce. In the present study, we examined how variation in life-history traits can influence colony foundation success in two European termite species: Reticulitermes grassei, an indigenous, and R. flavipes, an invasive. We conducted an experiment in which we observed the development of colonies founded by 165 royal pairs on a weekly basis over a 6-month period. Several key results emerged: (1) survival rates of royal pairs were lower in R. grassei; (2) R. grassei pairs laid fewer eggs; and (3) all castes contained fewer individuals in R. grassei colonies, but (4) their timing of appearance are similar for both species. Overall, R. grassei pairs seemed less robust and produced fewer offspring. To our knowledge, our study is the first to describe the foundation of R. grassei incipient colonies in detail over a 6-month period. We also discovered new information about R. flavipes’ colony foundation. The data suggest that the two species have different levels of colony foundation success, resulting in differences in colony development. This finding could help explain the invasiveness of R. flavipes. Our study contribute to our understanding of the spread of two termite pest species and shed light on critical steps in the colony foundation process.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Joël Meunier for his comments on early draft of the manuscript and for his statistical advices. We are also grateful to Marlène Goubault-Body for her statistical advices and to Jessica Pearce for her comments on English revision. This work was supported by a contract awarded to AGB by the National Center for Scientific Research and the city of Paris.

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  1. Institut de Recherche sur la Biologie de l’Insecte (UMR7261) CNRS, University of Tours, Tours, France

    L. Brossette, A.-G. Bagnères, A. Millot, S. Blanchard, S. Dupont & C. Lucas

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  1. L. Brossette
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  2. A.-G. Bagnères
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  3. A. Millot
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Contributions

The experiment was designed by CL, LB, AGB, SD. Fieldwork was performed by SD, LB, CL. The termite crosses and the transfer of the royal pairs to the glass cases were performed by LB, CL, SD, SB. LB followed colony development with the help of CL, SD, SB. The pictures were analyzed by AM, LB. The statistical analyses were conducted by LB, CL. The paper was written by LB, CL, AGB. All the authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to L. Brossette or C. Lucas.

Electronic supplementary material

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40_2017_571_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Figure 1. Overview of the experimental setup. (A) Schematic representation of the glass case and colony initiation including the two methodological steps. The colony was founded by placing the pair in a spot where no sand was present (Step 1). Then, the glass case was closed by sliding the upper plastic spacer in place (Step 2). The pair had access to the cellulose disk so that the termites did not have to excavate to obtain food (indicated by the red circle). (B) A picture of a colony 63 days post-establishment. (C) Magnified view of the pair and its offspring within the glass case. (PDF 200 kb)

40_2017_571_MOESM2_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Figure 2. Mean number (mean ± SE) of nymphs produced per pair over the 6 months of the experiment for R. grassei (dashed gray line, N = 87) and R. flavipes (solid black line, N = 78). The dotted lines indicate the different months. (PDF 59 kb)

40_2017_571_MOESM3_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Table 1. Number of replicates for each cross ID. The letters in the male and female columns are the codes for the colonies of origin for each reproductive used in the crosses. (PDF 14 kb)

40_2017_571_MOESM4_ESM.pdf

Supplementary Table 2. Results of the multiple pairwise comparisons used to assess the effect of species on each observation date. Bold values are significant. (PDF 28 kb)

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Brossette, L., Bagnères, AG., Millot, A. et al. Termite’s royal cradle: does colony foundation success differ between two subterranean species?. Insect. Soc. 64, 515–523 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00040-017-0571-x

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