Allometric Decay Of Walls' Repair Rate And Nest Volume In Cornitermes Cumulans (Blattodea: Termitidae)

Abstract

Termite nests volume has an important effect in colony's defense and specie cohabitation. There are two types of defense in termite nests: active defense mainly carried out by soldiers and passive defense performed by the wall’s nest, built and repaired by workers caste. As the wall is a protection shield, it should represent an energetic economy to the colony. Therefore the production of these castes involves the colony energetic strategies, maybe there is a change in these types of defense activity with the growth of the nest. Therefore, we hypothesize that with the \textit{Cornitermes cumulans} nest volume increase there is a decrease of the rebuilding activities. To do so, we damaged the \textit{C. cumulans} nests proportionally to its volume and left it for 24 hours to be rebuilt by termite workers. After that, the entire reconstructed area was collected to estimate the final volume. We estimated the repair rates by dividing the volume-repaired portion of the nest by the damaged volume. We found that there is a negative effect of nest repair rate with the increase of nest’s volume. It confirms there is a decrease in passive defense investment with the increase of the nest volume. Moreover, this decrease follows an allometric decay, as supported by Metabolic Theory Ecology. Perhaps it means that the colony has its own metabolic rules working as a unique organism. Financiamento: CAPES, CNPq.