Abstract
Social life and lifelong partner commitments are expected to favor
thorough partner choice, as an ill-suited partnership may have long-term
consequences, adversely affecting the parents and spanning several
cohorts of offspring. Here, we used ~1400 termite
incipient colonies to estimate the short- and long-term costs of
inbreeding upon the survival of the parents over a 15-month period,
their productivity, and the resistance of their offspring toward
pathogen pressure. We observed that foundation success was not
influenced by the relatedness of partners, but by their levels of
microbial load. We showed faster growth in inbred colonies, revealing a
potential tradeoff with pathogen susceptibility. Yet, inbreeding takes
its toll later in colony development when incipient colonies face
pathogen pressure. Although the consequences of choosing a lifetime
partner is initially determined by the partner’s health, the cost of
inbreeding in incipient colonies favors outbred colonies reaching
maturity