Multicoloniality in the highly polygynous ant Crematogaster pygmaea (Formicidae: Myrmicinae)

Title:

Multicoloniality in the highly polygynous ant Crematogaster pygmaea (Formicidae: Myrmicinae)

Creator:

Hamidi, Rachid, Debout, Gabriel, Heredia, Ana, Fournier, Denis, Quinet, Yves, and De Biseau, Jean-Christophe

Identifier:

https://cdk.lib.cas.cz/client/handle/uuid:30f5dd94-9dc9-4228-9b90-693780e6da5f
uuid:30f5dd94-9dc9-4228-9b90-693780e6da5f

Subject:

Zoologie, zoologie, entomologie, Formicidae, Myrmicinae, multicoloniality, polygyny, polydomy, Crematogaster pygmaea, context-dependent nestmate discrimination, 2, and 59

Type:

article, články, model:article, and TEXT

Description:

In social insects, the high variability in the number of queens per colony raises fundamental questions about the evolution of altruism. It is hypothesized, for instance, that nestmate recognition should be less efficient in polygynous than in monogynous colonies because the presence of several breeders increases the diversity of genetically determined recognition cues, leading to a less specific colonial signature. Recent studies, however, have shown that the link between the number of queens in a colony and the recognition abilities of its members is more complex than previously suggested. Here, we studied intraspecific aggression, diversity of potential recognition cues and genetic structure of colonies in the highly polygynous ant Crematogaster pygmaea. Our results reveal that workers of this species are clearly aggressive towards non-nestmates in field experiments but not in more artificial bioassays conducted in Petri dishes, underscoring the importance of context-dependent aspects of the assessment of nestmate recognition. Behavioural, genetic and chemical data show that C. pygmaea is a multicolonial species, forming spatially restricted and well-defined entities. Therefore, the postulated negative correlation between recognition ability of workers and queen number in a colony is not supported by the results of this study., Rachid Hamidi ... [et al.]., and Obsahuje seznam literatury

Language:

English

Rights:

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/
policy:public

Source:

European Journal of Entomology | 2012 Volume:109 | Number:1

Harvested from:

CDK

Metadata only:

false