The Quad-Hive

Since nothing's been said of the Insect life of Antarctica: The Quad-Hive: The Quad-Hive is unique in the animal kingdom. An Eusocal insect community made up of four different insect Species (The Quad-Bee, The Quad-Termite, The Lesser Quad Ant, and the Greater Quad-Ant.) These creatures share resources, and create an insect society unparallel in the animal kingdom in terms of complexity, structure, and specialization of labor. It is unclear how this came to be, but this symbiotic sharing of food and labor proved extremely beneficial in the Antarctic climate. What is clear is how this truce is enforced. All four species release queens and drones at the same time, and after mating, a young queen will seek out the other three species. If they fail to find all four, the young queens die, however, upon finding their counterparts, they link together into a single "Chimera queen". Over time the Abdomen and lower Thorax latterly fuse together, the exoskeleton dissolving at the point of contact. The four actually begin to exchange bodily fluid, and share nutrients. Should one die, it releases a powerful toxin that kills the other 3. This ensures that the good of one colony is the good of all four species. A worker shares food and cooperates with a worker from another species as readily as she would with her own sister, as they all have a single mother to protect. The lesser Quad ant is a form of "cutter" similar to those found in South America. It specialized in gathering plant matter during the green season, and cultivating it into an edible fungus. The greater Quad Ant is a "honey pot ant" like those found in the desert regions of Australia, and the Americas. These store food within them for long periods during the white season. The Quad Termites build the hive, but also turn wood into digestible matter. The Quad Bees, like most bees, gather nectar and create honey during the green season, and, along with the Termites, are responsible for the building of the hive itself. The hives are massive, rivaling those of the Hive Monkeys. Indeed, the two communities often use sites abandoned by the other for building materials and food gathering. The hives grow as tall as trees above ground, but are even more massive beneath. The shear scale of labor specialization is astonishing, with as many as 753 specialized worker castes between the four species.

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Interesting. Let's call this Hyper-Eusociality. Any precedents for Eusocial insects compounding or cohabiting in this fashion in either South America or Australia? The closest I can think of are those ants that 'farm' aphids, I think they're North American though.

I'm not sure how this would evolve.

One problem here is that the dynamics of bee and termite populations are very different in their range structures. There's a lot more food for termites than there are for bees in a given surface area of land. Thus, bee hives tend to be much smaller and with smaller populations than termites. Or to put it another way, given a bee hive and termite hive of the same population or biomass, the bees need to travel lots further.

I could imagine some form of commensalism where a particular species of bees makes its hive adjacent to or in a Termite colony. I'm not sure what the mutual advantage would be. Perhaps the bees offer protection from termite feeders or rival insects? You wouldn't necessarily have a joint species, but two separate unattached species that find mutual advantage in close quarters and whose lifestyle and feeding is different enough that there's no competition.

With ants, its a little tougher. Ants are predators. Termites are ant food. Unless of course you have vegetarian ants. In which case they're competitors.

Another issue would be how such Hyper-Eusocial populations would balance out. Environments are not always mutually hospitable to all four species. What happens when the environment or resources dramatically favours one as opposed to the others.

The notion of Hyper-Eusocials is quite interesting though. Perhaps you could sketch out the evolutionary history.

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It would make more sense to have some type of Termite, Wasp or Ant that's filled all of those Niches.

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To be honest, I have NO IDEA how this would come about, it just seemed like to cool an idea, plus a four-headed queen insect is just so Lovecraftian. As for the advantages? Look at it this way. The cutters cultivate fungus, the Termites digest wood, the bees gather nectar, the honey pots hunt. All of them have evolved the ability to digest all of it, and by sharing it they survive better in such a nutrient poor environment.

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Fair enough. I'll try and work it in. We might find other examples of hyper-eusociality in Antarctica, bee/termite commensalism seems promising. I suspect that the Quad Colonies have fairly limited range.