Elusive workers are more likely to differentiate into replacement reproductives than aggressive workers in a lower termite

作     者：Zhuang-Dong Bai Chong-Yang Shi David Sillam-Dusses Rui-Wu Wang 

作者机构：School of Ecology and EnvironmentNorthwestern Polytechnical UniversityXi'an 710072China Laboratory of Experimental and Comparative EthologyLEECUR 4443University Sorbonne Paris NordVilletaneuseFrance 

出 版 物：《Current Zoology》 (动物学报（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2023年第69卷第3期

页      面：332-338页

核心收录：

学科分类：0710[理学-生物学] 07[理学] 071002[理学-动物学] 

基　　金：This work was supported by the NSFC-Yunnan United fund(U2102221) National Natural Science Foundation of China(31360104) by the Project for Graduate Innovation Team of Northwestern Polytechnical University(02020-19GH010208),Xi'an,China。 

主　　题：consistent individual behavioral differences reproductive conflict reproductive differentiation,Reticulitermes labralis termite 

摘      要：One of the most intriguing questions in eusocial insects is to understand how the overt reproductive conflict in the colony appears limited when queens or kings are senescent or lost because the morphologically similar individuals in the colony are reproductively totipotent.Whether there are some individuals who preferentially differentiate into replacement reproductives or not has received little attention.The consistent individual behavioral differences(also termed“animal personality)of individuals from the colony can shape cunningly their task and consequently affect the colony fitness but have been rarely investigated in eusocial insects.Here,we used the termite Reticulitermes labralis to investigate if variations in individual personalities(elusiveness and aggressiveness)may predict which individuals will perform reproductive differentiation within colonies.We observed that when we separately reared elusive and aggressive workers,elusive workers differentiate into reproductives significantly earlier than aggressive workers.When we reared them together in the proportions 12:3,10:5,and 8:7(aggressive workers:elusive workers),the first reproductives mostly differentiated from the elusive workers,and the reproductives differentiated from the elusive workers significantly earlier than from aggressive workers.Furthermore,we found that the number of workers participating in reproductive differentiation was significantly lower in the groups of both types of workers than in groups containing only elusive workers.Our results demonstrate that the elusiveness trait was a strong predictor of workers’differentiation into replacement reproductives in R.labralis.Moreover,our results suggest that individual personalities within the insect society could play a key role in resolving the overt reproductive conflict.