Maternal Effect on Female Caste Determinati in a Social Insect

that differ genetically [9–14]. In these lineages, queen-destined eggs abort at periods when only workers are raised [15, 16], whereas the same eggs hatch and develop into adult queens at periods of reproduction. We conducted crossfostering more females (queens and workers) than smaller recipient colonies (Kruskall-Wallis test; X21 = 177.5, p < 0.0001; 26.2 6 15.0 females in smaller versus 54.3 6 35.3 females in larger recipient colonies). Queens produced in larger colonies were as large as the mother queens, whereas smaller colonies typically produced very small queens (data not shown). The finding that small colonies readily produced new queens in the laboratory is in apparent contrast with the observation that new queens and males are produced only in colonie