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

ABSTRACT: 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 aggressivene

SUBMITTER: Bai ZD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10284049 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature