Laboratoire Écologie and Évolution CNRS UMR 7625, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris 6, France.
Mol Ecol. 2011 May;20(9):2011-22. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2011.05075.x. Epub 2011 Mar 30.
In genetically diverse insect societies (polygynous or polyandrous queens), the production of new queens can set the ground for competition among lineages. This competition can be very intense when workers can reproduce using thelytoky as worker lineages that manage to produce new queens gain a huge benefit. Selection at the individual level might then lead to the evolution of cheating genotypes, i.e. genotypes that reproduce more than their fair share. We studied the variation in reproductive success among worker patrilines in the thelytokous and highly polyandrous ant Cataglyphis cursor. Workers produce new queens by thelytoky in orphaned colonies. The reproductive success of each patriline was assessed in 13 orphaned colonies using genetic analysis of 433 workers and 326 worker-produced queens. Our results show that patrilines contributed unequally to queen production in half of the colonies, and the success of patrilines was function of their frequencies in workers. However, over all colonies, we observed a significant difference in the distribution of patrilines between workers and worker-produced queens, and this difference was significant in three of 13 colonies. In addition, six colonies contained a low percentage of foreign workers (drifters), and in one colony, they produced a disproportionably high number of queens. Hence, we found some evidence for the occurrence of rare cheating genotypes. Nevertheless, cheating appears to be less pronounced than in the Cape Honey bee, a species with a similar reproductive system. We argue that worker reproduction by parthenogenesis might not be common in natural populations of C. cursor.
在遗传多样性的昆虫社会（多雌或多雄的女王）中，新女王的产生为谱系之间的竞争奠定了基础。当工蜂能够通过孤雌生殖进行繁殖时，这种竞争可能会非常激烈，因为能够产生新女王的工蜂谱系会获得巨大的利益。个体水平的选择可能会导致欺骗基因型的进化，即繁殖超过其公平份额的基因型。我们研究了在具有孤雌生殖和高度多雄的蚂蚁 Cataglyphis cursor 中，工蜂谱系在孤雌生殖中的生殖成功率的变化。工蜂在失去蚁后的蚁群中通过孤雌生殖产生新的女王。通过对 433 只工蜂和 326 只工蜂产生的女王进行遗传分析，在 13 个失去蚁后的蚁群中评估了每个谱系的生殖成功率。我们的结果表明，在一半的蚁群中，谱系对女王产生的贡献不均等，而且谱系的成功与其在工蜂中的频率有关。然而，在所有的蚁群中，我们观察到工蜂和工蜂产生的女王之间的谱系分布存在显著差异，在 13 个蚁群中的 3 个中这种差异是显著的。此外，有 6 个蚁群含有低比例的外来工蜂（漂移工蜂），而且在一个蚁群中，它们产生了不成比例的大量女王。因此，我们发现了一些罕见欺骗基因型发生的证据。然而，与具有类似生殖系统的海角蜜蜂蜜蜂相比，欺骗现象似乎不太明显。我们认为，工蜂的孤雌生殖可能在 C. cursor 的自然种群中并不常见。
