Colony founding can be done by an individual or in groups, known as pleometrosis. This joint effort of the co-foundresses contributes to the growth and survival of the incipient colony; nests founded by multiple queens begin the growth period with three times as many workers when compared to colonies founded by a single queen. Despite this, such associations are not always stable. The emergence of the first workers instigates queen-queen and queen-worker fighting. In pleometrotic conditions, only one queen emerges victorious, whereas the queens that lost are subsequently killed by the workers. The two factors that could affect the survival of individual queens are their relative fighting capabilities and their relative contribution to worker production. Size, an indicator of fighting capacity, positively correlates with survival rates. However, manipulation of the queen's relative contribution to worker production had no correlation with survival rate.