“…Instead, polydomy may result from constraints on nest size: as Temnothorax species live in small natural cavities such as hollow acorns or rotten twigs, a single nest may be too small to accommodate growing sexual brood in spring and early summer [20,21,[64][65][66][67]. Polydomy has also been suggested to act as a thermoregulatory mechanism [20,21,31,68,69], a bet-hedging strategy decreasing a colony's vulnerability to external risks [20,21,32,70], or a means for workers to escape queen control in intra-colonial reproductive conflicts [20,21,26,[71][72][73]. All these factors combined may contribute to trigger the foundation of polydomous nests in spring in Temnothorax species.…”