The eusocial naked mole rat exhibits extreme reproductive skew, with a single queen monopolizing breeding through behavioral dominance. When the queen is removed or dies, reproductive suppression is lifted, leading to aggression and intracolony conflict. While this may be advantageous under stable conditions, reliance on a single breeder may create vulnerabilities during environmental stress. Here, we report a longitudinal study of a captive colony identifying a mechanistically distinct, nonviolent mode of queen succession. Elevated colony density impaired pup survival but did not alleviate reproductive suppression or trigger aggression. In contrast, relocating the colony to a new facility caused a prolonged pause in the queen’s reproduction, without social disturbance. During this period, her daughters sequentially emerged as additional breeders, resulting in a period of peaceful plural breeding before one daughter ultimately assumed the primary reproductive status. Thus, reproductive ascension can be socially tolerated when queen reproduction declines, expanding the mechanistic framework of naked mole rat eusociality to include peaceful, fertility-based succession.
Abeywardena et al. (Wed,) studied this question.