Brunner Elisabeth, Trindl Andreas, Falk Karl H, Heinze Juergen, D'Ettorre Patrizia
Biologie I, Universität Regensburg, Germany.
Evolution. 2005 Nov;59(11):2480-2.
In insect societies, workers cooperate but may also pursue their individual interests, such as laying viable male eggs. The case of obligatory slave-making ants is of particular interest because workers do not engage in maintenance activities and foraging. Therefore, worker egg laying is expected to be less detrimental for colony efficiency than in related, nonparasitic species. Furthermore, as slave-making workers usually do not perform brood care and thus might have little power in manipulating sex allocation, they might be more strongly selected to increase their direct fitness by producing their own sons than workers in nonparasitic species. In this study we investigated worker reproduction in four natural colonies of the slave-making ant Polyergus rufescens, using highly variable microsatellite markers. Our results show that workers produce up to 100% of the males. This study thus presents the first direct evidence of an almost complete takeover of male reproduction by workers in ants.
在昆虫社会中，工蚁会合作，但也可能追求自身利益，比如产下可存活的雄蚁卵。强制性蓄奴蚁的情况尤其引人关注，因为工蚁不参与巢穴维护活动和觅食。因此，与相关的非寄生性蚁种相比，工蚁产卵对蚁群效率的损害预计会更小。此外，由于蓄奴工蚁通常不参与照料幼虫，因此在控制性别分配方面可能权力较小，与非寄生性蚁种的工蚁相比，它们可能会更强烈地被选择通过生育自己的儿子来提高直接适合度。在本研究中，我们使用高度可变的微卫星标记，调查了蓄奴蚁红褐举腹蚁四个自然蚁群中的工蚁繁殖情况。我们的结果表明，工蚁产下的雄蚁比例高达100%。因此，本研究首次直接证明了蚂蚁中雄蚁繁殖几乎完全被工蚁接管。
