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Q&A

Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity

Poster

SysEB: Evolution and Behavior

D3255: Lack of agonism in Nasutitermes acajutlae between Caribbean islands

Wednesday, November 3, 2021
9:00 AM – 2:00 PM MT
Location:: Exhibit Hall F
In-Person Poster
In Nasutitermes species, interactions between colonies can vary from highly aggressive to non-agonistic. Previous work on Nasutitermes acajutlae determined the only potentially alarm or agonistic behavior observed between members of colonies on St. John, USVI to be jittering, and it was performed more frequently by soldiers than workers. In the current study we examined interactions between N. acajutlae workers and soldiers collected from multiple Caribbean islands (St. John, St. Thomas, and St. Croix, USVI, and Tortola, BVI) to determine whether increased distance and presumed decreased relatedness would increase potential exploratory (antennation), alarm (jittering) or agonistic (biting) behaviors. Five workers and soldiers per colony were paired with the same numbers of individuals in control (same colony) and experimental (colony from another island) behavioral assays. Individuals were observed every 15 seconds for five minutes to determine the numbers of each behavior performed. After 12 hours, the number of surviving individuals were also recorded. As in the previous study, no biting or significant differences in survival were observed thus, we did not observe overt agonism among N. acajutlae individuals across multiple Caribbean islands. Over all islands combined, workers antennated significantly more than soldiers, while soldiers jittered significantly more than workers. There was no significant correlation found between distance and survival, and while exploratory behavior (antennation) increased with distance as expected if genetic distance also increases, the decrease in alarm behavior (jittering) with distance was not. Further exploration is needed to determine the reason for the lack of agonism in this species.