Queen recruitment in a multiple-queen population of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta

We assessed patterns of new queen recruitment in a polygyne(multiple queens per nest) population of the fire ant Solenopsisinvicta in its introduced range. Newly recruited queens wereidentified using four physiological markers, and genotypic datafrom nuclear and mitochondrial markers were used to estimaterelatedness of new nest mate queens to each other and to theolder nest mate queens. In total, 1.7% of the queens collectedin late spring and early summer were deemed to be new recruits.The relatedness of these queens to each other and to the olderqueens within nests was not significantly different from zero,suggesting that newly recruited queens represent a random sampleof potential reproductive queens in the population. Moreover,the number of new queens recruited within nests was not correlatedwith the number of older queens present and did not differ significantlyfrom a Poisson distribution. Thus, queen recruitment in this populationof S. invicta appears to occur at random with respect to thenumber of older queens present within nests.