Queen lifespan and colony characteristics in ants and termites L. Keller Institute of Zoology and Animal Ecology, University of Lausanne, BB, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, e-mail: Laurent.Keller@izea.unil.ch Key words: Lifespan, queen, ants, termites, comparative analysis. Summary Comparative studies are increasingly used to identify factors responsible for the evolution of plant and animal phenotypes and social insects provide ideal systems for such studies as a result of their modular growth and their bewildering diversity in social organization. Here I review data on the lifespan of queens in ants and termites because such data are highly relevant for comparative analyses on life-history. Lifespan has been reported in 53 ant and 10 termite species. Information on the mode of colony founding and number of queens per colony is also provided for the 53 ant species. Finally, I suggest that students of social insects would greatly benefit if information on colony characteristics, individual phenotypes and behaviour would become available for a larger number of species, perhaps on a database that would be accessible on the web. Introduction Comparative studies are increasingly used to identify factors responsible for the evolution of plant and animal phenotypes (e.g., Harvey and Pagel, 1991; Leroi and Lauder, 1994). Social insects provide ideal systems for such studies as a result of their modular growth, their bewildering diversity in social organization, reproduc- tive strategies, life-histories, diets, and their large number of species (Hölldobler and Wilson, 1990; Bourke and Franks, 1995; Crozier and Pamilo, 1996), yet the number of comparative studies that have been performed to date is very small com- pared to other taxa such as birds and mammals. There are perhaps no more than 20 comparative studies of social insects that include 10 or more species (e.g., Trivers and Hare, 1976; Cole, 1983; Keller and Passera, 1989; Passera and Keller, 1990; Frumhoff and Ward, 1992; Kaspari and Vargo, 1995) and very few of these studies have controlled for the effect of phylogeny (Frumhoff and Ward, 1992; Keller and Reeve, 1994; Keller and Genoud, 1997). One important reason for the paucity of such comparative studies is the lack of detailed and reliable data on parameters such as colony size, queen number, worker and queen body sizes, number of matings per queen, and mating strategies. More- Insectes soc. 45 (1998) 235 – 246 0020-1812/98/030235-12 $ 1.50+0.20/0 © Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel, 1998 Insectes Sociaux Review article