Flexibility in nest density and social structure in invasive populations of the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile

The extraordinary success of unicolonial insect invaders has renewed interest in the origins and maintenance of unicoloniality, a social system characterized by the absence of aggressive behavior between individuals of neighboring conspecific nests. In this study, I explore how traits associated with unicoloniality, particularly nest budding and the local exchange of workers between nests, vary across environments. Comparisons of nest characteristics in three introduced populations of Argentine ants, Linepithema humile, reveal considerable variation in nest density and social structure across populations. The population with the highest nest density has smaller, less productive nests and fewer queens per nest than the two populations with low nest densities. Nestmate relatedness is low in all populations, but multi-locus genotype analyses reveal that levels of connectivity vary among populations. In particular, high nest density is associated with higher levels of genotypic similarity between nests. Assignment distances in the two populations with low nest density are similar to a native population, suggesting that the amount of mixing between neighboring nests is shared among some native and introduced populations. Because the study populations are similar in age and genetic diversity, these results suggest that the social structure of L. humile populations depend on the ecological context. Understanding the patterns of expression of unicolonial traits in different environments helps to shed light on the origins of unicoloniality and to explain the success of Argentine ants as invaders.