Nonaggressive behavior: A strategy employed by an obligate nest invader to avoid conflict with its host species

In addition to its builders, termite nests are known to house a variety of secondary opportunistic termite species so‐called inquilines, but little is known about the mechanisms governing the maintenance of these symbioses. In a single nest, host and inquiline colonies are likely to engage in conflict due to nestmate discrimination, and an intriguing question is how both species cope with each other in the long term. Evasive behaviour has been suggested as one of the mechanisms reducing the frequency of host‐inquiline encounters, yet, the confinement imposed by the nests' physical boundaries suggests that cohabiting species would eventually come across each other. Under these circumstances, it is plausible that inquilines would be required to behave accordingly to secure their housing. Here, we show that once inevitably exposed to hosts individuals, inquilines exhibit nonthreatening behaviours, displaying hence a less threatening profile and preventing conflict escalation with their hos...

除白蚁巢的建造者外，已知蚁巢可容纳多种次级机会性白蚁物种，即所谓的客居蚁（inquilines），但目前针对维持这类共生关系的机制仍所知甚少。在单个蚁巢中，宿主与客居蚁群体可能因巢友识别引发冲突，一个引人关注的问题是二者如何实现长期共存。此前有研究提出，逃避行为是降低宿主与客居蚁相遇频率的机制之一，但蚁巢的物理边界所造成的空间限制，意味着共生物种最终仍会彼此遭遇。在此情形下，客居蚁需要做出相应行为以保障其栖息场所，这一推测具有合理性。本研究证实，当不可避免地接触到宿主个体时，客居蚁会表现出无威胁行为，从而呈现出更低的威胁性特征，并避免与宿主发生冲突升级……