Fitness and the level of homozygosity in a social insect
- Haag-Liautard, Cathy Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
- Vitikainen, Emma Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland
- Keller, Laurent Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
- Sundström, L. Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland
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23.10.2008
Published in:
- Journal of Evolutionary Biology. - 2009, vol. 22, no. 1, p. 134 - 142
English
To date very few studies have addressed the effects of inbreeding in social Hymenoptera, perhaps because the costs of inbreeding are generally considered marginal owing to male haploidy whereby recessive deleterious alleles are strongly exposed to selection in males. Here, we present one of the first studies on the effects of queen and worker homozygosity on colony performance. In a wild population of the ant Formica exsecta, the relative investment of single-queen colonies in sexual production decreased with increased worker homozygosity. This may either stem from increased homozygosity decreasing the likelihood of diploid brood to develop into queens or a lower efficiency of more homozygous workers at feeding larvae and thus a lower proportion of the female brood developing into queens. There was also a significant negative association between colony age and the level of queen but not worker homozygosity. This association may stem from inbreeding affecting queen lifespan and/or their fecundity, and thus colony survival. However, there was no association between queen homozygosity and colony size, suggesting that inbreeding affects colony survival as a result of inbred queens having a shorter lifespan rather than a lower fecundity. Finally, there was no significant association between either worker or queen homozygosity and the probability of successful colony founding, colony size and colony productivity, the three other traits studied. Overall, these results indicate that inbreeding depression may have important effects on colony fitness by affecting both the parental (queen) and offspring (worker) generations cohabiting within an ant colony.
- 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 11248
- DOI 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2008.01635.x
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/300951
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