Data from: Inter-clonal competition over queen succession imposes a cost of parthenogenesis on termite colonies

In social insect colonies, selfish behaviour due to intracolonial conflict
among members can result in colony-level costs despite close relatedness.
In certain termite species, queens use asexual reproduction for
within-colony queen succession but rely on sexual reproduction for worker
and alate production, resulting in multiple half-clones of a single
primary queen competing for personal reproduction. Our study demonstrates
that competition over asexual queen succession among different clone types
leads to the overproduction of parthenogenetic offspring, resulting in the
production of dysfunctional parthenogenetic alates. By genotyping the
queens of 23 field colonies of Reticulitermes speratus, we found that
clone variation in the queen population reduces as colonies develop. Field
sampling of alates and primary reproductives of incipient colonies showed
that overproduced parthenogenetic offspring develop into alates that have
significantly smaller body sizes and much lower survivorship than
sexually-produced alates. Our results indicate that while the production
of earlier and more parthenogenetic eggs is advantageous for winning the
competition for personal reproduction, it comes at a great cost to the
colony. Thus, this study highlights the evolutionary interplay between
individual-level and colony-level selection on parthenogenesis by queens.