The Effect of Queen and Worker Adoption on Weaver Ant (Oecophylla smaragdina F.) Queen Fecundity

J Offenberg, Renkang Peng, M. G. Nielsen, D Birkmose

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    10 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Incipient ant colonies are often under fierce competition, making fast growth crucial for survival. To increase production, colonies can adopt multiple queens (pleometrosis), fuse with other colonies or rob brood from neighboring colonies. However, different adoption strategies might have different impacts such as future queen fecundity or future colony size. O. smaragdina queen production was measured in incipient colonies with 2, 3 or 4 founding queens, following the transplantation of 0, 30 or 60 pupae from a donor colony. Pupae developed into mature workers, resulting in increased worker/queen ratios in pupae transplanted treatments and leading to increases in the per capita queen production. Conversely, more queens did not induce increased per capita fecundity. Thus, brood robbing added individuals to the worker force and increased future production of resident queens, whereas queen adoption increased the colony's future production, but not the production of individual queens. � 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)478-485
    Number of pages8
    JournalJournal of Insect Behavior
    Volume25
    Issue number5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Sept 2012

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