Aggressive behavior and colony recognition in Cryptocercus punctulatus wood roaches

Social insects must discriminate colony mates from other conspecifics, and bias their behavior according to kinship. To date, little has been learned regarding this fundamental property in Cryptocercus, the social wood roach that occupies an important place in our concepts regarding the origin of sociality. We present behavioral data from experimental trials that forced interaction between individual roaches. We demonstrate that Cryptocercus does perform a class of kin recognition, and that relevant behaviors differ between adults and nymphs. We discuss the significance of these findings with respect to the classical use of Cryptocercus as a model of the origin of sociality in termites.