Abstract
Colony size in social insects is one of the most important factors in shaping their self-organized system. It affects a wide variety of traits such as foraging and defense strategies, social immune responses, the degree of polymorphism, and reproductive output. However, colony size estimation of subterranean termites in the field has been challenging, due to their extremely cryptic biology and multiple site–nesting behavior. Since natural selection favors workers that maximize the number of their siblings, the amount of egg production may reflect the number of workers in the colony. Here, we report a method for inferring colony size in the field using total egg production in each colony from a subterranean termite, Reticulitermes speratus. Our investigation of field colonies revealed that the body weight of queens reaches a peak and had the largest variance in June and July and accurately predicts the number of eggs laid by the queen per 24 h. Using laboratory-reared colonies, we found that the total egg production in each colony is proportional to the number of workers. We also estimated the colony size of 198 field colonies and found that the median and maximum colony size was 24,500 and 451,800 workers per colony. The method for inferring colony size presented here may also be applicable to termite species with a clear seasonality in egg production. The colony size estimate will contribute to understanding the life history strategies and social systems of termites.
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Data availability
All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.
Code availability
The codes for graphing and statistical analyses used for this paper are available at GitHub (https://github.com/MamoruTakata/Colony_size_estimate).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Matthew Tatsuo Kamiyama for the fruitful discussion, and Wu Yao, Chihiro Tamaki, Takehiro Morimoto, Hiroki Noda, Shuya Nagai for assistance in collecting termites and helpful discussion.
Funding
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers JP18H05268, JP20K20380, and JP23H00332 to K.M., JP21K14863 to M.T., and JP20J20278 to T.K.
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Conceptualization, M.T.; methodology, M.T. and K.Y.; validation, M.T.; formal analysis, M.T.; investigation, M.T., K.Y., T.N. S.M., T.K., and E.T.; resources, M.T., K.Y., T.N. S.M., T.K., and E.T.; writing—original draft: M.T.; writing—review and editing: M.T., K.Y., T.N. S.M., T.K., E.T., and K.M.; visualization, M.T. and T.K.; supervision, M.T. and K.M.; project administration, M.T.; funding acquisition, M.T., T.K., and K.M.
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Takata, M., Yabe, K., Noro, T. et al. A method for estimating colony size using queen fecundity in termites under field conditions. Sci Nat 110, 35 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-023-01865-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-023-01865-6