Martin S J, Shemilt S, Drijfhout F P
Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK.
Naturwissenschaften. 2012 Apr;99(4):327-31. doi: 10.1007/s00114-012-0898-0. Epub 2012 Feb 23.
Among social insects, maintaining a distinct colony profile allows individuals to distinguish easily between nest mates and non-nest mates. In ants, colony-specific profiles can be encoded within their cuticular hydrocarbons, and these are influenced by both environmental and genetic factors. Using nine monogynous Formica exsecta ant colonies, we studied the stability of their colony-specific profiles at eight time points over a 4-year period. We found no significant directional change in any colony profile, suggesting that genetic factors are maintaining this stability. However, there were significant short-term effects of season that affected all colony profiles in the same direction. Despite these temporal changes, no significant change in the profile variation within colonies was detected: each colony's profile responded in similar manner between seasons, with nest mates maintaining closely similar profiles, distinct from other colonies. These findings imply that genetic factors may help maintain the long-term stability of colony profile, but environmental factors can influence the profiles over shorter time periods. However, environmental factors do not contribute significantly to the maintenance of diversity among colonies, since all colonies were affected in a similar way.
在社会性昆虫中，保持独特的群体特征能让个体轻松区分巢内同伴和非巢内同伴。在蚂蚁中，群体特异性特征可编码在其表皮碳氢化合物中，且这些特征受环境和遗传因素的影响。我们利用九个单蚁后的掘穴蚁蚁群，在四年时间里的八个时间点研究了它们群体特异性特征的稳定性。我们发现任何蚁群特征都没有显著的方向性变化，这表明遗传因素维持着这种稳定性。然而，季节存在显著的短期影响，且以相同方向影响所有蚁群特征。尽管存在这些随时间的变化，但未检测到蚁群内部特征变异的显著变化：每个蚁群的特征在不同季节间以相似方式响应，巢内同伴保持着非常相似的特征，与其他蚁群不同。这些发现意味着遗传因素可能有助于维持群体特征的长期稳定性，但环境因素可在较短时间段内影响这些特征。然而，环境因素对蚁群间多样性的维持贡献不大，因为所有蚁群都受到类似的影响。
