Development rate and brood production in haplo- and pleometrotic colonies of Oecophylla smaragdina

Abstract

Pleometrosis (colony founding by multiple queens) may improve life history characteristics that are important for early colony survival. When queens unite their initial brood, the number of workers present when incipient colonies open may be higher than for single queen colonies. Further, the time until the first worker emerges may shorten. For territorial species and species that rob brood from neighbouring colonies, a faster production of more workers may improve the chance of surviving intraspecific competition. In this study, the time from the nuptial flight to the emergence of the first worker in incipient Oecophylla smaragdina Fabr. colonies founded by 1-5 queens was compared and the production of brood during the first 68 days after the nuptial flight was assessed. Compared to haplometrotic colonies, pleometrotic colonies produced 3.2 times more workers, their first worker emerged on average 4.3 days (8%) earlier and the queen's per capita egg production almost doubled. Further, colony production was positively, correlated with the number of founding queens and time to worker emergence was negatively correlated. These results indicate that pleometrotic O. smaragdina colo-nies are competitively superior to haplometrotic colonies as they produce more workers faster and shorten the claustral phase, leading to increased queen fecundity.

Pupae Transplantation to Boost Early Colony Growth in the Weaver Ant Oecophylla longinoda Latreille (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

“…In the present study, the total population size (all brood stages) in the colonies that received 0 pupae was 1.99 times higher (mean = 46.5 ± 3.6 SE) compared to the results obtained by Offenberg et al (2012a) in the hapleometrotic colonies of O. smaragdina (mean = 23.3 ± 2.0 SE) after 68 days. This lower production in O. smaragdina was likely affected by the fact that the colonies in that study were transported under cold conditions at the start of the experiment which may have delayed their development.…”

“…This lower production in O. smaragdina was likely affected by the fact that the colonies in that study were transported under cold conditions at the start of the experiment which may have delayed their development. On the other hand, the total population size (all brood stages) after 68 days was 1.6 times higher in the pleometrotic O. smaragdina (Offenberg et al, 2012a) colonies (mean = 74.9 ± 10.5 SE) compared to the haplometrotic colonies in this study (mean = 46.5 ± 3.6 SE). This highlights the strong effect of multiple queens in founder colonies.…”

“…The brood transplantation experiment was divided into two sub-experiments; one where queens were kept individually with their brood and transplanted pupae, and a second where two queens were artificially merged into one colony to test for pleometrosis, as has been observed for O. smaragdina (Peeters & Andersen 1989;Offenberg et al, 2012a;Offenberg et al, 2012b).…”

Food Preferences and Foraging Activity of Asian Weaver Ants, Oecophylla smaragdina (Fabricius) (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

“…The distribution of O. smaragdina in Malaysia is abundant (Jander & Jander 1979;Blüthgen & Fiedler 2002), but little is known about their foraging activities (Peng et al 2012a) and food preferences (Nene et al 2016), particularly in this region. However, there are some researches on their colony structures (Offenberg et al 2012;Marcela et al 2012), ecology (Offenberg et al 2004), predation behaviours (Pierre & Idris 2013;Gathalkar & Barsagade 2016), their benefit as biological control agent (Offenberg et al 2013;Rodríguez-Gironés et al 2013), and nuisances caused by this species (Van Mele et al 2009). Oecophylla smaragdina is a well-known biological control agent used to control mango seed weevil, yellow looper, bush cricket, fruit-spotting bug, and red-banded thrips populations in the Northern Territory of Australia (Peng & Christian 2004, 2007Peng et al 2012bPeng et al , 2013.…”

Intraspecific variation in colony founding behavior and social organization in the honey ant Myrmecocystus mendax

“…One of the most likely factors is territory defense. Cooperative colony founding has been shown to increase the rate of brood production (Waloff 1957;Tschinkel and Howard 1983;Johnson 2004;Offenberg et al 2012) and the total number of workers a colony produces (Bartz and Hölldobler 1982;Tschinkel and Howard 1983;Mintzer 1987;Hölldobler 1992, 1995;Trunzer et al 1998;Johnson 2004;Offenberg et al 2012). These extra workers can boost colony survival by contributing to colony defense and resource acquisition (Bernasconi and Strassmann 1999).…”