Costs and benefits of joint colony founding in Australian Acacia thrips

Abstract

Facultative joint colony founding by social insects (pleometrosis) provides an outstanding opportunity to analyze the costs and benefits of sociality. Pleometrosis has been documented for a range of social insects, but most studies on the adaptive benefits of this behavior are restricted to the Hymenoptera. In this study, we provide the first analysis of costs and benefits associated with pleometrosis for Australian Dunatothrips, which form domiciles by glueing together phyllodes (leaves) of their Acacia host plant. In Dunatothrips aneurae, the distribution of foundress numbers per nest indicated that females formed associations non-randomly. Furthermore, average group size was independent of both the number of foundresses on the host plant and the number of mature colonies, suggesting that this behavior was not simply a response to limited availability of nesting sites. Although per capita reproduction declined with increasing group size, we also identified two benefits of pleometrosis: (1) individual foundresses in groups had higher survival than solitary foundresses during the brood development period, and (2) larger colony sizes resulting from pleometrosis provided a benefit later in colony development, because a higher proportion of D. aneurae adults survived invasions by the kleptoparasite Xaniothrips mulga when colony size was larger. These results demonstrate that the reproductive costs of pleometrosis are at least partially counterbalanced by survival benefits.