Peaceful behaviour: a strategy employed by an obligate nest invader to avoid conflict with its host species

Abstract

In addition to its builders, termite nests are known to house a variety of secondary, opportunistic termite species, but little is known about the mechanisms governing the maintenance of such associations. In a single nest, host and intruder are likely to engage in intense conflict, due to their nestmate discrimination system. An intriguing question is how individuals cope with such a burden in the long term. Evasive behaviour has been previously suggested as a mechanism that reduces the frequency of encounters between non-nestmates. However, due to confinement imposed by the nests physical boundaries, it is likely that hosts and inquilines 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 tested this hypothesis predicting that, once inevitably exposed to hosts, inquiline individuals would modulate their behaviour to circumvent conflict. While exploring the behavioural dynamics of the encounter between both cohabitants, we find evidence for an unusual lack of aggressiveness by inquilines towards hosts. Such a non-aggressive behaviour is characterised by evasive manoeuvres that include reversing direction, bypassing and a defensive mechanism using defecation to repel hosts. The behavioural adaptations we describe may play an intrinsic role in the stability of cohabitations between termite species: by reducing the costs of conflicts to both cohabitants, it may improve the chances for stable nest-sharing considerably.