[ajuc]

> I wonder if we have any way of telling how old a particular colony could possibly be?

Maybe sequencing DNA from a lot of the individual organisms and counting how many differences there are? Older colonies should accumulate the differences, right?

[andrewflnr]

Differences relative to what? A young and old colony are still the same evolutionary distance from their last common ancestor. Even if there was some change in mutation rate once a colony is formed, it would be really hard to measure the difference. Maybe diversity within a colony is a clue?

[ajuc]

Differences between each other? IIUC the colony forms from a few individuals cloning itself over and over?

If that's the case then old colony would have more differences between the individuals than a new colony.