Fig. 1

Queen co-founding is independent of pathogen exposure. Introduced queens that were either pathogen-exposed (grey queens) or had received a sham treatment (white queens) were given the choice of founding a colony alone or with a residing queen already present in the nest, which had either been pathogen-exposed (grey queens) or sham-treated (white queens). There was no significant effect of the queen combinations and time on the co-founding decision of queens, revealing that pathogen exposure of neither the residing nor the introduced queen affects colony co-founding choice (points ± grey shading represent proportions ±95% confidence intervals for each time point; 0.5 dashed line added for visual interpretation; GLMM model non-significant). Supporting data in Additional file 1