The role of epigenetics in regulating caste polyphenism in social insects has been debated. Here, we tested the importance of histone de/acetylation processes for the maintenance of queen hallmarks like a high fecundity and a long lifespan. To this end, we performed RNA interference experiments against histone deacetylase 3 ( HDAC3 ) in the termite Cryptotermes secundus . Fat body transcriptomes and chemical communication prof...

In non-pedigreed populations, insights into effects of inbreeding can be obtained by correlations between individual heterozygosity and fitness-related traits (HFCs). Using an information-theoretic approach, we explored whether heterozygosity of microsatellite markers, measured as internal relatedness (IR), is associated with infection by blood parasites ( Plasmodium , Trypanosoma, or Leucocytozoon ) in the threatened Aquatic...

Habitat fragmentation is one of the most important causes of biodiversity loss, but many species are distributed in naturally patchy habitats. Such species are often organized in highly dynamic metapopulations or in patchy populations with high gene flow between subpopulations. Yet, there are also species that exist in stable patchy habitats with small subpopulations and presumably low dispersal rates. Here, we present populat...

Symbiotic interactions between macrotermitine termites and their fungal symbionts have a moderate degree of specificity. Consistent with horizontal symbiont transmission, host switching has been frequent over evolutionary time so that single termite species can often be associated with several fungal symbionts. However, even in the few termite lineages that secondarily adopted vertical symbiont transmission, the fungal symbion...

Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 754–760 Abstract Conflict and competition lie at the heart of the theories of both ecology and sociobiology. Despite this, the interaction between societal conflicts on one hand and ecological competition on the other remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate this interaction in two ecologically similar sympatric termite species, Cryptotermes secundus Hill and Cryptotermes domesticus Haviland....