Variation in colony structure in the subterranean termite Reticulitermes flavipes

Genetic diversity and colony breeding structure in native and introduced ranges of the Formosan subterranean termite, Coptotermes formosanus

“…Outside of Hawaii, only 1 of 13 extended family colonies in South Carolina showed positive F IC values, while none of the 47 extended family colonies from three native populations from China (this study and Husseneder et al 2008) and none of the over 43 extended families from the introduced range of Louisiana Aluko and Husseneder 2007), North Carolina and Japan Perdereau et al 2010b), relatedness among workers is expected to drop below 0.5 (Thorne et al 1999;Bulmer et al 2001), and worker genotypes would not be consistent with being the offspring of neotenics whose origin can be traced back to a single founder pair. However, all Hawaiian colonies with positive F IC showed high relatedness (0.52-0.72), and none had more than four alleles per locus.…”

“…Budding occurs when a portion of a colony gradually splits off and becomes a separate reproductive unit. During the process of budding genetically differentiated nests may still exchange workers (Husseneder et al 1998) which results in positive F IC -values (Thorne et al 1999;Bulmer et al 2001). Thus, budding may be a viable form of colony propagation in the Hawaiian islands; although this is rare in other C. formosanus populations (Vargo and Husseneder 2009).…”

“…As previously reviewed (Vargo and Husseneder 2009), F IC is the coefficient of inbreeding in individuals relative to their colony and reflects most clearly the colony's breeding system (Bulmer and Traniello 2002;Thorne et al 1999;Bulmer et al 2001). Empirical F IC values of colonies were compared among populations via independent samples t-test not assuming equal variances, and to values predicted by the computer simulations for different breeding systems (Bulmer et al 2001;Thorne et al 1999) by one-sample t-tests (SPSS 17.0).…”

“…As previously reviewed (Vargo and Husseneder 2009), F IC is the coefficient of inbreeding in individuals relative to their colony and reflects most clearly the colony's breeding system (Bulmer and Traniello 2002;Thorne et al 1999;Bulmer et al 2001). Empirical F IC values of colonies were compared among populations via independent samples t-test not assuming equal variances, and to values predicted by the computer simulations for different breeding systems (Bulmer et al 2001;Thorne et al 1999) by one-sample t-tests (SPSS 17.0). In addition, one-tailed one-sample t-tests were used to test F IC values across all loci for each extended family colony to establish the proportion of colonies for which F IC was significantly greater than zero (which would indicate assortative mating, mixing of colonies, and/or budding), not significantly different from zero (high number of neotenic reproductives) or significantly lower than zero (low number of reproductives) (Bulmer et al 2001;Thorne et al 1999).…”

“…Furthermore, colony fusion, resulting in colonies headed by multiple unrelated reproductives, occurs in a greater rate in introduced populations of R. flavipes (up to 31%, (Perdereau et al 2010b) than in the native range (DeHeer and Vargo 2004), and, in general, populations with high proportions of extended family colonies have the highest rate of colony fusion (Bulmer et al 2001;DeHeer and Kamble 2008). Fusion is facilitated by low levels of aggression among R. flavipes colonies.…”