Maternal attendance and the maintenance of family groups in common earwigs (Forficula auricularia):: a field experiment

1. Understanding the evolution of subsocial behaviour and parental care requires experimental tests of the functional significance of such behaviours and the role of tending parents in the maintenance of family groups. Studies in subsocial insects addressing these issues experimentally and in the field are still relatively rare. 2. In such a field experiment, it is demonstrated here that the presence of tending females enhances the maintenance of family groups in common earwigs, Forficula auricularia (Dermaptera; Forficulidae). Experimental removal of tending mothers resulted in substantially decreased recovery of occupied nest burrows and larvae. This effect may have been because of decreased survival among experimental larvae, although a possible role for enhanced larval dispersal could not be fully ruled out. 3. Experimental (motherless) larvae were partly observed in family groups with a tending female, in both experimental and control nest burrows, suggesting that these larvae had been adopted by family groups moving to new nest burrows, and/or that experimental larvae may have actively joined other family groups. 4. This study demonstrates under field conditions the functional importance of maternal attendance for the maintenance of family groups in common earwigs, and suggests that adoption and clutch-joining are factors affecting the social structure of this species.