Overview
- Salk Institute researchers reported Wednesday in Science Advances that a naked mole-rat colony replaced its queen without fights after her fertility failed.
- Over six years the team established a healthy colony, then raised density and later relocated it, and the move to a new facility preceded the queen’s loss of reproduction.
- The transition unfolded gradually as the reigning queen and a subordinate female cooperated, including overlapping pregnancies, until a daughter became the sole breeder by late 2025.
- The finding challenges the long-held view that naked mole-rat queens are replaced only through violent “queen wars,” pointing to unexpected social flexibility.
- The authors caution the result comes from one controlled colony and call for field studies to learn what conditions favor peaceful versus violent turnover, with lessons for how cooperation supports resilience in living systems.