Breeding system and reproductive skew in a highly polygynous ant population
- Haag-Liautard, Cathy Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Switzerland - Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland - Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
- Pedersen, J. S. Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Switzerland - Centre for Social Evolution, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
- Ovaskainen, O. Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland
- Keller, Laurent Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
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17.06.2008
Published in:
- Insectes Sociaux. - 2008, vol. 55, no. 4, p. 347-354
English
Factors affecting relatedness among nest members in ant colonies with high queen number are still poorly understood. In order to identify the major determinants of nest kin structure, we conducted a detailed analysis of the breeding system of the ant Formica exsecta. We estimated the number of mature queens by mark-release-recapture in 29 nests and dissected a sub-sample of queens to assess their reproductive status. We also used microsatellites to estimate relatedness within and between all classes of nestmates (queens, their mates, worker brood, queen brood and male brood). Queen number was very high, with an arithmetic mean of 253 per nest. Most queens (90%) were reproductively active, consistent with the genetic analyses revealing that there was only a minimal reproductive skew among nestmate queens. Despite the high queen number and low reproductive skew, almost all classes of individuals were significantly related to each other. Interestingly, the number of resident queens was a poor predictor of kin structure at the nest level, consistent with the observation that new queens are produced in bursts leading to highly fluctuating queen number across years. Queen number also varied tremendously across nests, with estimates ranging from five to several hundred queens. Accordingly, the harmonic mean queen number (40.5) was six times lower than the arithmetic mean. The variation in queen number was the most important factor of the breeding system contributing to a significant relatedness between almost all classes of nestmates despite a high average number of queens per nest.
- Faculty
- Faculté des sciences et de médecine
- Department
- Département de Biologie
- Language
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- English
- Classification
- Biological sciences
- License
- License undefined
- Identifiers
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- RERO DOC 11247
- DOI 10.1007/s00040-008-1010-9
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/300940
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