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Cofoundress relatedness and group productivity in colonies of social Dunatothrips (Insecta: Thysanoptera) on Australian Acacia

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Abstract

Facultative joint colony founding by social insects provides opportunities to analyze the roles of genetic and ecological factors in the evolution of cooperation. Although cooperative nesting is observed in range of social insect taxa, the most detailed studies of this behavior have been conducted with Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps). Here, we show that foundress associations in the haplodiploid social thrips Dunatothrips aneurae (Insecta: Thysanoptera) are most often comprised of close relatives (sisters), though groups with unrelated foundresses are also found. Associations among relatives appear to be facilitated by limited female dispersal, which results in viscous population structure. In addition, we found that per capita productivity declined with increasing group size, sex ratios were female-biased, and some female offspring apparently remained in their natal domicile for some time following eclosion. D. aneurae thus exhibits a suite of similarities with eusocial Hymenoptera, providing evidence for the convergent evolution of associated social and life-history traits in Hymenoptera and Thysanoptera.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mike Schwarz and Tom Chapman for providing lab space and organizing field logistics as well as Laurence Mound and David Morris for the help in collecting samples. We also thank David Queller for his assistance with the maximum likelihood analysis and three anonymous reviewers for the constructive comments on the manuscript. This research was funded by an NSF International Research Fellowship to J.M.B and an NSERC grant to B.J.C.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Behavioural Ecology Research Group, Department of Biosciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada

    Jeremy M. Bono & Bernard J. Crespi

  2. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, 1041 E. Lowell Street, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Jeremy M. Bono

Authors
  1. Jeremy M. Bono
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  2. Bernard J. Crespi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeremy M. Bono.

Additional information

Communicated by L. Keller

Appendices

Appendix 1

Table 3 Summary of D. aneurae colony samples from two collecting trips to New South Wales (NSW) and South Australia (SA)
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Appendix 2

Table 4 Primer sequences, number of alleles, H o (observed heterozygosity), and allele size ranges for three microsatellites used to analyze cofoundress relatedness
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Bono, J.M., Crespi, B.J. Cofoundress relatedness and group productivity in colonies of social Dunatothrips (Insecta: Thysanoptera) on Australian Acacia . Behav Ecol Sociobiol 62, 1489–1498 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-008-0578-4

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