Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
J Exp Biol. 2020 May 11;223(Pt 9):jeb220079. doi: 10.1242/jeb.220079.
is a widespread genus of maternally transmitted endosymbiotic bacteria that often manipulates the reproductive strategy and life history of its hosts to favor its own transmission. -mediated phenotypic effects are well characterized in solitary hosts, but effects in social hosts are unclear. The invasive pharaoh ant, , shows natural variation in infection between colonies and can be readily bred under laboratory conditions. We previously showed that -infected pharaoh ant colonies had more queen-biased sex ratios than uninfected colonies, which is expected to favor the spread of maternally transmitted Here, we further characterize the effects of on the short- and longer-term reproductive and life history traits of pharaoh ant colonies. First, we characterized the reproductive differences between naturally infected and uninfected colonies at three discrete time points and found that infected colonies had higher reproductive investment (i.e. infected colonies produced more new queens), particularly when existing colony queens were 3 months old. Next, we compared the long-term growth and reproduction dynamics of infected and uninfected colonies across their whole life cycle. Infected colonies had increased colony-level growth and early colony reproduction, resulting in a shorter colony life cycle, when compared with uninfected colonies.
是一个广泛存在的母系共生细菌属，它经常操纵宿主的生殖策略和生活史，以有利于自身的传播。 -介导的表型效应在独居宿主中得到了很好的描述，但在社会性宿主中的效应尚不清楚。入侵法老蚁 ， ，在感染之间存在着自然的群体间变异，可以在实验室条件下很容易地繁殖。我们之前曾表明，感染法老蚁的蚁群比未感染的蚁群具有更高的偏向女王的性别比例，这有利于母系传播的传播。在这里，我们进一步描述了感染对法老蚁蚁群的短期和长期生殖和生活史特征的影响。首先，我们在三个不同的时间点描述了自然感染和未感染蚁群之间的生殖差异，发现感染蚁群具有更高的生殖投资（即感染蚁群产生了更多的新女王），尤其是当现有的蚁群女王 3 个月大时。接下来，我们比较了感染和未感染蚁群在整个生命周期中的长期生长和繁殖动态。与未感染的蚁群相比，感染蚁群的群体水平生长和早期群体繁殖增加，导致蚁群的生命周期缩短。
