Termite nest evolution fostered social parasitism by termitophilous rove beetles

Mizumoto, Nobuaki; Bourguignon, Thomas; Kanao, Taisuke

doi:10.1111/evo.14457

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…The latter is often the case in one-piece nesting termites (e.g., (Sugio et al, 2020)), whose colony life is completed within a piece of wood that serves as food and nest (Abe, 1987; Mizumoto and Bourguignon, 2020). Phylogenetic comparative analysis showed that one-piece nesting termites have smaller colony sizes than other nesting types (Mizumoto et al, 2022b), and thus, their total number of alates within a nest must be smaller. Because synchronization is not facilitated by social interactions when the number of alates is small (Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The significance of social interactions in synchronized swarming flight in a termite

Mizumoto,

Nozaki

2023

Preprint

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In social insect colonies, individuals of working caste coordinate their actions to manage various collective tasks. Such collective behaviors are observed not only in working castes but also in reproductives. During certain seasons, newly emerged winged reproductives (alates) fly from the nest to disperse and find mating partners in a synchronized manner. Although this “swarming” behavior is one of the collective behaviors that involve the greatest number of individuals in social insects, underlying social interactions remain unexplored. Here, we show that synchronized flight among colony members results from collective decision-making. Our simple simulation model suggests that social interactions in a large group of alates enable synchronized flight within a nest under fluctuating environmental conditions. This model is supported by empirical experiments using a termiteReticulitermes kanmonensis. Under the semi-field environment with fluctuating temperatures, alates within the same colony synchronized their dispersal flight under higher air temperatures, while dispersal flight was suppressed under lower temperatures. Furthermore, termites could synchronize their dispersal flights even under laboratory conditions with constant temperature, indicating that environmental cues are not always necessary for synchronization. In either case, higher synchronization happened with a larger number of alates. All these results demonstrate that both environmental and social factors interplay to enable the synchronized swarming flight of social insects.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The significance of social interactions in synchronized swarming flight in a termite

Mizumoto,

Nozaki

2023

Preprint

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“…Species for which an estimate of mean colony size (mean number of individuals, excluding eggs) was available served as reference for the analysed sample, as this variable is the most difficult to measure. Colony size was obtained from published data compilations [34,[37][38][39][40] and references therein, complemented with several specific references not in the compilations [41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. Then, the remaining variables of interest were obtained from those same references if they provided such variables, or from other published data compilations on the respective subjects: sterile caste number [25], nest-food separation [48] and soilfeeding [21,49].…”

Section: Materials and Methods (A) Data Assemblymentioning

confidence: 99%

Resource adaptation drives the size–complexity rule in termites

Pequeno

2024

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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The size–complexity rule posits that the evolution of larger cooperative groups should favour more division of labour. Examples include more cell types in larger multicellular organisms, and more polymorphic castes in larger eusocial colonies. However, a correlation between division of labour and group size may reflect a shared response of both traits to resource availability and/or profitability. Here, this possibility was addressed by investigating the evolution of sterile caste number (worker and soldier morphotypes) in termites, a major clade of eusocial insects in which the drivers of caste polymorphism are poorly understood. A novel dataset on 90 termite species was compiled from the published literature. The analysis showed that sterile caste number did increase markedly with colony size. However, after controlling for resource adaptations and phylogeny, there was no evidence for this relationship. Rather, sterile caste number increased with increasing nest–food separation and decreased with soil-feeding, through changes in worker (but not soldier) morphotype number. Further, colony size increased with nest–food separation, thus driving the false correlation between sterile caste number and colony size. These findings support adaptation to higher energy acquisition as key to the rise of complex insect societies, with larger size being a by-product.

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“…While some species are central‐place foragers, maintaining a nest and foraging distant resources, single‐piece nesting termites complete the entire life cycle of the colony within a single piece of dead wood. Thought to be the ancestral condition, around 19% of species are single‐piece nesting (Inward et al, 2007 ; Mizumoto et al, 2022 ). In these species, a high level of competition over the same nesting space and food resource results in frequent interactions between colonies that live at high densities (Thorne et al, 2003 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Us, them, and the others: Testing for discrimination amongst outgroups in a single‐piece nesting termite,Zootermopsis angusticollis

Padget

Cant

Thompson

2023

Ecology and Evolution

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Recognition of group members is an important adaptation in social organisms because it allows help to be directed toward kin or individuals that are likely to reciprocate, and harm to be directed toward members of competing groups. Evidence in a wide range of animals shows that responses to outgroups vary with context, suggesting that cues to group membership also depend on the social or environmental context. In termites, intergroup encounters are frequent and their outcomes highly variable, ranging from destruction of a colony to colony fusion. As well as genetic factors, nestmate recognition in social insects commonly relies on cues that are mediated by environmental factors such as food source. However, single-piece nesting termite colonies share nesting material and food source with rival colonies (their wood substrate serves as both). In principle, the shared environment of single-piece nesting termite colonies could constrain their ability to identify non-nestmates, contributing to some of the variation seen in encounters, but this has not been investigated. In this study, we raised incipient colonies of a single-piece nesting termite, Zootermopsis angusticollis, on two different wood types and conducted behavioral assays to test whether nestmate discrimination can be constrained by common environmental conditions. We found that non-nestmates elicited higher rates of identity checking and defense behavior compared to nestmates, but there was no effect of wood type on the strength of behavioral responses to non-nestmates. We also found that one key cooperative behavior (allogrooming) was performed equally toward both nestmates and non-nestmates. These findings offer no support for the hypothesis that common wood type constrains the nestmate recognition system of single piece nesting termites. We suggest that where groups encounter each other frequently in a common environment, selection will favor discrimination based on genetic and/or higher resolution environmentally mediated cues.

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Termite nest evolution fostered social parasitism by termitophilous rove beetles

Cited by 4 publications

References 46 publications

The significance of social interactions in synchronized swarming flight in a termite

The significance of social interactions in synchronized swarming flight in a termite

Resource adaptation drives the size–complexity rule in termites

Us, them, and the others: Testing for discrimination amongst outgroups in a single‐piece nesting termite,Zootermopsis angusticollis

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