Colony Founding Research Articles

Mandan Dandies: Trade, Intimacy and Ornamental Excess in a Destroyed 1832 Portrait by George Catlin

Abstract This essay considers the role played by economics and sexuality in the development of the imaginary of US settler colonialism by considering George Catlin’s destroyed 1832 portrait of an anonymous Mandan ‘dandy’. Catlin’s representation of Indigenous dandies likely informed Charles Baudelaire’s account of the dandy as an avatar of the transition to modernity, but during the gay and Indigenous liberation movements of the 1970s, the Mandan dandy was reclaimed as evidence of pre-colonial queer sexualities. Synthesising these conceptions, the essay argues that this figure illuminates the material conditions of modernity in the fur trade: an unstable assemblage of contradictory Indigenous and Euro-American systems of economic exchange, political power and sexual intimacy. The dandy figures a form of queerness that was conceived as an effect of these socioeconomic conditions, which Catlin condemned as perverse: a queerness that lay at the foundations of settler colonialism rather than in opposition to it.

Tracing the Historical Roots of Urban Transformation: The Case of Portoviejo, Ecuador

This paper examines the historical trajectory of Portoviejo, Ecuador, to address how urban planning often overlooks the significance of historical processes, leading to fragmentation and neglect of culturally important spaces. While urban transformation literature has explored the socio-economic, environmental, and infrastructural drivers of change, a gap remains in understanding the specific historical contexts that shape cities in developing countries. This study aims to bridge this gap by exploring key moments in Portoviejo’s development, including its colonial foundation, natural disasters, and modernization efforts, and how they have shaped its urban form. Using a mixed-methods qualitative approach, the research analyses 63 historical documents and local archives, combined with Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping to trace urban growth and spatial reorganization. The findings reveal that Portoviejo’s development has been shaped by colonial policies, infrastructural changes such as the introduction of the railway, and natural disasters that led to urban fragmentation and informal settlements. The study highlights that understanding the historical trajectory of cities is essential for developing urban planning strategies that are resilient and contextually grounded. For practitioners, this research underscores the importance of integrating historical insights into planning processes to ensure development aligns with the socio-cultural identity and long-term resilience of cities.

Myrmecophily among mesostigmatid mites

AbstractAnt nests are biodiversity hot spots, concentrating resources from a wide area that can be exploited by other organisms, known as myrmecophiles. The mite order Mesostigmata includes a wide range of lineages that have become myrmecophiles with many species reliant on ant nests for at least part of their development. The nature of the associations is quite variable, including predators of smaller arthropods in the nest (close to the ancestral lifestyle of these mites), scavengers, kleptoparasites, parasites, and parasitoids. A few mite species show extreme modifications of morphological and/or developmental patterns, others show almost none. Some host specificity is common but one-on-one host specialization is rare or poorly tested. Phoresy on the ants is common, but the target ant caste varies with the goal of phoresy. In general, the diversity of mesostigmatid mites in the nest of a given ant species is affected by habitat conditions along with a range of life history characteristics of the ants, including factors such as body size, colony size, colony founding mode, social parasitism, and nest density. Unfortunately, the life history of the majority of mites associated with ants is still unknown.

How inquilinism shaped breeding systems in a termite host-inquiline relationship.

Social insects have developed a broad diversity of nesting and foraging strategies. One of these, inquilinism, occurs when one species (the inquiline) inhabits the nest built and occupied by another species (the host). Obligatory inquilines must overcome strong constraints upon colony foundation and development, due to limited availability of host colonies. To reveal how inquilinism shapes reproductive strategies in a termite host-inquiline dyad, we carried out a microsatellite marker study on Inquilinitermes inquilinus and its host Constrictotermes cavifrons. The proportion of simple, extended and mixed families was recorded in both species, as well as the presence of neotenics, parthenogenesis and multiple foundations. Most host colonies (95%) were simple families and all were monodomous. By contrast, the inquiline showed a higher proportion of extended (30%) and mixed (5%) families, and frequent neotenics (in 25% of the nests). This results from the simultaneous foundation in host nests of numerous incipient colonies, which, as they grow, may compete, fight, or merge. We also documented the use of parthenogenesis by female-female pairs. In conclusion, the classical monogamous colony pattern of the host species suggests uneventful development of simple foundations dispersed in the environment, in accordance with the wide distribution of their resources. By contrast, the multiple reproductive patterns displayed by the inquiline species reveal strong constraints on foundation sites: founders first concentrate into host nests, then must attempt to outcompete or absorb the neighbouring foundations to gain full control of the resources provided by the host nest.

Size-dependent responses of colony-founding bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) queens to exposure to pesticide residues in soil during hibernation

Bumblebees and other key pollinators are experiencing global declines, a phenomenon driven by multiple environmental stressors, including pesticide exposure. While bumblebee queens spend most of their life hibernating underground, no study to date has examined how exposure to pesticide-contaminated soils might affect bumblebee queens during this solitary phase of their lifecycle. We exposed Bombus impatiens queens (n = 303) to soil treated with field-realistic concentrations of two diamide insecticides (chlorantraniliprole and cyantraniliprole) and two fungicides (boscalid and difenoconazole), alone or combined, during a 30-week hibernation period. We found that exposure to boscalid residues in soil doubled the likelihood of queens surviving through the colony initiation period (after successful hibernation) and laying eggs. Our data also revealed complex interactions between pesticide exposure and queen body mass on aspects of colony founding. Among others, exposure to cyantraniliprole led to lethal and sublethal post-hibernation effects that were dependent on queen size, with larger queens showing higher mortality rates, delayed emergence of their first brood, and producing smaller workers. Our results show that effects of pesticide exposure depend on intrinsic traits of bumblebee queen physiology and challenge our understanding of how bees respond to pesticides under environmentally realistic exposure scenarios.

Indigenous Natures and the Anthropocene: Racial Capitalism, Violent Materialities, and the Colonial Politics of Representation

AbstractIndigenous Peoples are gaining renewed attention within both policy and academia, as examples of “resilience” and of non‐humanist, non‐modern ways of relating to nature, which might, it is hoped, provide tools to withstand the socio‐ecological crises associated with “the Anthropocene”. This paper argues that such representations obscure both their own colonial foundations and the ongoing forms of racialised dispossession and ecocide faced by Indigenous Peoples today. Instead, we conceptualise indigeneity and nature as deeply entangled categories that are co‐produced with capitalist modernity. Engaging anti‐colonial and Marxist scholarship, and drawing on our long‐term research with Indigenous movements in Bolivia and Colombia, we highlight how discursive and material assemblages of indigeneity and nature are dialectically linked to capitalist processes of dispossession and subaltern efforts to contest these. We further highlight how romanticised accounts of non‐modern nature‐cultures are unsettled by the violent world‐making of colonial capitalism and the unequal burdens placed on Indigenous territories and bodies. We use an ethnographic vignette from the Bolivian Chaco to illustrate the messy everyday ways in which real Indigenous people navigate, contest, endure, and make do amidst the contradictory processes of racialisation, dispossession, and conditional recognition that characterise their positioning within colonial capitalism. In doing so, we show how thinking from the sacrifice zones of extractive capitalism unsettles contemporary debates on decolonising nature in the Anthropocene.

Do diesel exhaust particles in pollen affect colony founding in the bumble bee Bombus terrestris?

Do diesel exhaust particles in pollen affect colony founding in the bumble bee Bombus terrestris?

Review of Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education by Sharon Stein

Review of Unsettling the University: Confronting the Colonial Foundations of US Higher Education by Sharon Stein

Optimal fissioning strategies of social insects with respect to colony dynamics and nest founding probability

Social insects demonstrate two fundamentally different modes of reproduction, independent colony foundation (ICF) by single fertilized queens or dependent colony foundation (DCF) by fissioning of existing colonies into two or several new colonies (swarms). In some species, both reproductive modes occur in parallel. The benefits and disadvantages of DCF vs. ICF have been widely discussed and been subject to empirical studies, but a formal theoretical treatment of the topic is still incomplete. Taking honey bees as example, we provide a resource allocation model of colony dynamics to analyze the ecological conditions under which DCF may be favored over ICF. Using mathematical and numerical methods, we show that it critically depends on the survivorship function linking swarm size to the probability of swarm establishment whether ICF or DCF results in a higher output of surviving new colonies. Because building larger swarms requires larger inter-swarm time intervals, DCF can only be a better strategy if this disadvantage is over-compensated for by a strong size-dependent swarm survivorship and survival of single queens is very low. Colony growth rate has no effect on this decision and the impact of maximum possible colony size is negligible. Further, there is a discontinuity in the optimal swarm size, so that either a swarm size of 1 (ICF) is the best strategy, or emitting swarms of considerable size (DCF). Consequently, a direct evolutionary transition from ICF to DCF appears unlikely and may have been triggered by selective pressures promoting movement of complete nests or distributing single colonies over several nests (polydomy).

Solitary foundation or colony fission in ants: an intraspecific study shows that worker presence and number increase colony foundation success.

Dispersal and establishment strategies are highly variable. Each strategy is associated with specific costs and benefits, and understanding which factors favour or disfavour a strategy is a key issue in ecology and evolution. Ants exhibit several strategies of establishment, i.e. of colony foundation. Some species rely on winged queens that found new colonies alone when others found with accompanying workers (colony fission). The benefits conferred by these workers have been little studied and quantified, because comparing the costs and benefits of solitary foundation vs. colony fission is difficult when comparing different species. We investigated this using the ant Myrmecina graminicola, one of the few species that use both strategies. Young mated queens were allowed to found new colonies in the laboratory, with either zero (solitarily), two or four workers (colony fission). The presence of workers increased both survival and growth of the foundations over the first year, with more workers yielding higher growth. Few workers (as little as two workers) were sufficient to provide benefits, suggesting that in M. graminicola the strategy of colony fission may not dramatically decrease the number of new colonies produced compared to solitary foundation. Because queens performing solitary foundation or colony fission differ in dispersal (by flight vs. on foot), our results support the hypothesis that these two strategies of foundation coexist along a competition-colonization trade-off, where solitary foundation offers a colonization advantage, while colony fission has a competitive advantage.

The Emergence of the Replica Model? An Analysis of the Question of the ‘Copies of Rome’ in Late Republican Colonization Through Three Case-Studies

The debate around the replica model of Roman colonization has traditionally been focused on the early to mid-Republican colonial foundations in Italy. In this context, scholars have, in the last decades, rightly challenged the former orthodoxy to assert that these colonies were not, as was previously assumed, replicas of Rome. These same scholars, however, have often stated that these replicas were the result of later Republican and imperial colonial practices that emerged in this period. This paper puts this assumption of the ‘emergence of the replica model’ to the test to show that this is not the case. Through an examination of the elements of the replica model, as well as a series of three case-studies (Corinth, Urso, and Pompeii), the present work will show that there is no evidence to suggest a replica model in the colonies of the Late Republic and Early Empire, but rather, at most, an inspiration taken from Roman institutions that can hardly be identified with the traditional arguments of the simulacrum.

Before Westphalia: Imagining An Alternative Asian Globalization

The world order as it is known and understood today was built upon the foundations of imperialism and colonialism. It must be acknowledged that the very epistemologies and vocabularies that we use in the domains of diplomacy, international relations and politics are part of the legacy of Empire as well. This paper asks, is it possible for us to rethink and/or re-imagine an alternative global system that reconnects with the realities of socio-economic and socio-political life across the Asian continent and the world of the Indian Ocean prior to the arrival of Western imperialism? And, if that is indeed possible, would this also open up new opportunities for us to imagine the manner through which we – as postcolonial Asian and African scholars and subjects – represent ourselves and the ‘Western Other’?

Scars of a Colonial History

Central to virtually any indictment of South African literature, its historiography, or otherwise culturally and politically influenced modes of representation persist themes of social, political, and racial inequality. That is not to say that all South African cultural productions revolve around a centrifuge of racially focused social commentary; rather, that when historicizing a work of South African aesthetics such themes inevitably arise because of the nation’s colonial history and the Eurocentrism that have pervaded its modern socio-political foundations. When examining South African aesthetic/cultural representations (in this case, a literary text) it is thus crucial to properly locate the work in as full a historical context as possible. My research therefore aims to link South Africa’s history of colonization with the damaged race relations that ensued in the twentieth century as represented in a prominent work of South African theater: Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold” … And the Boys. My essay traverses the history of British and Dutch colonization in South Africa and seeks therein to register foundations for the Eurocentric, whitewashed ideologies which would eventually translate into official state policy in 1948 and which precipitated the broken race relations that Fugard’s semi-autobiographical play interrogates. I discuss Fugard’s depiction of white privilege while systematically linking such representations back to their colonial foundations, and ultimately assess Fugard’s play as a condemnation of white supremacy and as a plea for the recalibration of prejudiced racial hierarchies.

Elephant in the Matrix

With the maturing of sound studies, and its intersection with critical studies, more attention is being given to the Anglo-Euro-centric and hegemonic legacy of acoustic ecology, as well as the cultural dimensions of sound studies. Discord between the practice of sound inquiry and sound ethnography has thus ensued, signaling the need to reexamine language and concept limitations, long-standing methods, approaches, and assumptions embedded in sonic research. In this paper we question the colonial foundations of sound studies in relation to researcher positionality and the conflicted task of attempting decoloniality from within the colonial institution that is academia. Beginning with a vignette, we position ourselves at the intersections of the discourse of coloniality and empire, and ask how sound studies, and indeed our own scholarship, mobilizes structures of power. Then we review major strands of decolonial scholarship within Canada and from key Latin American theorists, in relation to Canadian sound studies. And lastly, we offer what we call a speculative sonic framework for decolonial praxis: a set of suggestions for researchers that starts with the experiential more broadly, and the sonic more specifically, to mobilize decolonial praxis at the core of the research design.

Weight and protozoa number but not bacteria diversity are associated with successful pair formation of dealates in the Formosan subterranean termite, Coptotermes formosanus.

New colonies of Formosan subterranean termites are founded by monogamous pairs. During swarming season, alates (winged reproductives) leave their parental colony. After swarming, they drop to the ground, shed their wings, and male and female dealates find suitable nesting sites where they mate and become kings and queens of new colonies. The first generation of offspring is entirely dependent on the nutritional resources of the founder pair consisting of the fat and protein reserves of the dealates and their microbiota, which include the cellulose-digesting protozoa and diverse bacteria. Since termite kings and queens can live for decades, mate for life and colony success is linked to those initial resources, we hypothesized that gut microbiota of founders affect pair formation. To test this hypothesis, we collected pairs found in nest chambers and single male and female dealates from four swarm populations. The association of three factors (pairing status, sex of the dealates and population) with dealate weights, total protozoa, and protozoa Pseudotrichonympha grassii numbers in dealate hindguts was determined. In addition, Illumina 16S rRNA gene sequencing and the QIIME2 pipeline were used to determine the impact of those three factors on gut bacteria diversity of dealates. Here we report that pairing status was significantly affected by weight and total protozoa numbers, but not by P. grassii numbers and bacteria diversity. Weight and total protozoa numbers were higher in paired compared to single dealates. Males contained significantly higher P. grassii numbers and bacteria richness and marginally higher phylogenetic diversity despite having lower weights than females. In conclusion, this study showed that dealates with high body weight and protozoa numbers are more likely to pair and become colony founders, probably because of competitive advantage. The combined nutritional resources provided by body weight and protozoa symbionts of the parents are important for successful colony foundation and development.

Claustral colony founding is limited by body condition: experimental feeding increases brood size of Lasius niger queens (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Abstract Ants can found colonies in different ways. One is by claustral colony foundation, when fertilized queens typically have enough nutrients reserved in their bodies to raise the first ‘nanitic’ worker generation without any foraging activity. This colony-foundation strategy evolved in response to selective pressures (e.g. predators), but it limits the number of nanitic workers. We, therefore, assumed that fed queens might initially rear more nanitic workers, although feeding might also be associated with risks and stress. In this study, we analysed the effects of stress and different diets during the colony-foundation period on the success of colony founding by claustral black garden ant Lasius niger (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) queens. Our findings confirm that regularly fed claustral ant queens raise more pupae and workers, reflecting that limited brood size is a cost of safety behaviour for claustral ant queens. There is another notable aspect of our findings for laboratories: in order to maximize the size of the nanitic worker generation, they can feed claustral ant queens with crickets.

From the margins to the center: Advancing research on caregiver socialization of emotion in Asia

AbstractAs in other fields of developmental science, emotion socialization research in Asia, where nearly 60% of the world's population lives, has emerged on the margins. Contextualizing this marginalization within colonial foundations of our science, in this article, I discuss the historic dominance of the Global North frameworks of emotion socialization. I also address associated limitations of emotion socialization research in Asia, recent conceptualizations that integrate cultural processes and emerging insights from this research, and the need for a decolonial framework to further advance this literature. A decolonial framework would enable scholars to contextualize emotion socialization within local milieus; use research methods valued by local communities; and interpret emotion‐related beliefs and behaviors in Asia as assets, not deficits. Adopting a decolonial framework can move emotion socialization research in Asia from the margins to the center of emotion socialization literature, generating knowledge to support the well‐being of children in Asia and around the world.

On the reproductive strategies post-colony foundation: major termite pest species with distinct ecological habits differ in their oviposition dynamics.

Termite colony foundation precedes the incipient stage, when the first oviposition cycle takes place, followed by months of reproductive inactivity. The royal couple is supposed to cease oviposition during this period, investing energy to care for the first brood. When a suitable number of alloparents differentiate, egg-laying resumes. Here we followed oviposition dynamics, embryo development and queen/king body changes in laboratory colonies of the major pest species Coptotermes gestroi (Rhinotermitidae) and Cryptotermes brevis (Kalotermitidae) during 9 months. We show that they differ in these oviposition dynamics, as C. gestroi queens displayed an uninterrupted oviposition whereas C. brevis laid a cohort of eggs and ceased oviposition during a 3-month period (lag phase). C. gestroi oviposition dynamic was remarkable and suggests that occurrence of progeny was not a limiting factor, thus queens and kings were able to concomitantly invest energy in reproduction and parental care. These findings contrast those reported for rhinotermitids from temperate areas, and we discuss the likely reasons for such a condition, including endogenous rhythms, avoidance of a high mortality rate of the first progeny and adaptation to the weather conditions of the Neotropical region. Oviposition dynamic in C. brevis resembled those of several termite species, in which the royal couple cease reproduction to care for the first brood. Rearing conditions did not influence oviposition dynamics (egg-laying cycle followed by a lag phase), thus our results on the oviposition of C. gestroi and C. brevis correspond to different reproductive strategies post-foundation adopted by these pest species.

Low concentrations of acetamiprid, deltamethrin, and sulfoxaflor, three commonly used insecticides, adversely affect ant queen survival and egg laying

Ants are key ecosystem service providers and can serve as important biological control agents in pest management. However, the effects of insecticides on common farmland ant species are poorly understood. We tested the effects of three commonly used insecticides on ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). The tested insecticides were acetamiprid (neonicotinoid; formulated as Mospilan 20 SP), deltamethrin (pyrethroid; formulated as Sanium Ultra), and sulfoxaflor (sulfilimine; formulated as Gondola). We tested two ant (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) species with different colony founding strategies, Lasius niger (Linnaeus, 1758) and Myrmica rubra (Linnaeus, 1758). We sprayed their queens with insecticides at concentrations recommended for use in foliar applications in agriculture, i.e., at 1.25 g L−1 (acetamiprid), 0.6 g L−1 (sulfoxaflor), and 0.875 g L−1 (deltamethrin). Further, we diluted the compounds in distilled water and tested them at 10%, 1%, and 0.1% of the field-recommended concentrations, and used distilled water as a control. We monitored the survival of the queens and the number of eggs laid. All three tested insecticides caused severe lethal and sublethal concentration-dependent effects. Even at concentrations three orders of magnitudes lower than recommended for field applications, significantly lower numbers of eggs were found in the queens’ nests. The extent of the sublethal effects of acetamiprid and sulfoxaflor was concentration-dependent and differed between the two ant species. Besides bees and bumblebees, ants represent an important group of hymenopterans that are severely affected even by low concentrations of the tested compounds and therefore should be included in risk assessment schemes.

The Trans-Indigenous Lens: A Re-recognition

Abstract Originally part of the 2022 Presidential Roundtable “Comparative Literature and Indigeneity,” this essay meditates on the ACLA president’s call to “decolonize” the field of comparative literature. Beyond providing a catchy slogan, what might “decolonization” mean for the practice of our scholarship and teaching? As a beginning of an answer, the essay revisits the author’s 2012 Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies and considers what has—and, importantly, what has not—changed within literary studies marked as “comparative,” “world,” and/or “global” in the decade since the book’s publication. How have provocations to center the Indigenous as an optics and as a mode of analysis been taken up, extended, critiqued, or reimagined by others? To illustrate the potential limitations of calls to “decolonize” dominant academic institutions, including the field of comparative literature, the essay offers a preliminary analysis of how a specific example of Indigenous self-representation produces meaning within two related but contrasting venues for display and interpretation: a conventional museum space implicitly coded as “colonial” and an avant-garde museum space explicitly labeled as “decolonizing.” The results are suggestive of the difficulty for dominant academic institutions to transcend colonial foundations and ongoing colonial habits.