PHOTO: UF/IFAS
A University of Florida scientist who studies the parental behavior of termites has got a rare glimpse of how a queen-king couple is pushing the boundaries of parenthood.
The result is a look at how the queen and king work their hardest as parents during the colony’s early life to ensure their offspring make it and to allow them to retire from parenting responsibilities.
dr Thomas Chouvenc, assistant professor of entomology at the UF/IFAS Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center, has published new research in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Functional Ecology. The study sheds light on altruistic parental behavior in a destructive pest partially responsible for the $40 billion a year in termite damage to buildings around the world.
“Scientists often think of termites as these complex societies where the workers take care of everyone, including the queen and king,” said Dr. Chouvenc in the press release. “That’s true in developed colonies, but during colony establishment, the most notable parents are the new queen and new king.”
Termites start a colony with two winged termites flying out of their original colony, explained Dr. Chouvenc. Once found, they drop their wings and isolate to mate and start a new colony, he said in the release.
In termites, a new colony is tended by two parents, where a new queen and king are in charge of everything. As workers emerge, the colony shifts to “alloparental” care, where the role shifts to older offspring to care for younger siblings.
For the study, Dr. Chouvenc 450 Underground termite colonies (Coptotermes spp.) in the early stages of establishment. dr Chouvenc studied the timing of physiological changes in the queen and king during the transition from biparental to alloparental care.
PHOTO: UF/IFAS
In the study, the results of Dr. Chouvenc that king and queen pairs tirelessly tend to their first brood until the parents are almost exhausted. The queen and king later shift responsibility to their first offspring once the children are ready as functional workers.
This shift allows the queen and king to relinquish all caring responsibilities and focus only on reproduction, thereby increasing worker production. This leads to rapid, steady colony growth.
“During this critical time, most ‘wannabe’ queens and kings fail to establish themselves and die,” he said. “These winged termites leave their nest with limited resources and make a one-time attempt to establish a new colony. The queen and king enter into a lifelong monogamous relationship and must raise the first few offspring alone.”
The study also shows that this couple’s parenting responsibilities last only a few months, explained Dr. Chouvenc. Once the first few workers are produced, the queen and king become completely dependent on them and stop caring for the newly laid eggs.
“In a way, termite kings start out as the most dedicated parents, but once their first children can tend to the next batch of eggs, they step away from that duty forever,” he said. “They just focus on producing more eggs while the colony continues to grow under the care of a growing workforce.”
dr Chouvenc concludes that while this study highlights the importance of parental care in the emergence of insect societies, “future comparative studies among other termites and ants may reveal how such societies became dominant ecosystem engineers over millions of years of evolution.”
