Université de Fribourg

Breeding system and reproductive skew in a highly polygynous ant population

Haag-Liautard, Cathy ; Pedersen, J. S. ; Ovaskainen, O. ; Keller, Laurent

In: Insectes Sociaux, 2008, vol. 55, no. 4, p. 347-354

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...