Queen execution in the Argentine ant, <i>Iridomyrmex humilis</i>

Keller, Laurent; Passera, Luc; Suzzoni, J. P.

doi:10.1111/j.1365-3032.1989.tb00947.x

Cited by 94 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Ten other colonies had to be discarded because they had produced fewer than 20 pupae after 4 weeks (5, 3 and 2 of these colonies belonged to the lowdiversity, egg-transferred and pupae-transferred treatment groups, respectively; chi 2 -goodness-of-fit: df=2, chi 2 =0.64, P=0.73). The reasons for the high mortality and low productivity of queens are not known, but at this time of the year, queens do also have a very high mortality and low fertility in the field (Benois 1973;Keller et al 1989b).…”

Section: Low and High Genetic Diversity Coloniesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental manipulation of colony genetic diversity had no effect on short-term task efficiency in the Argentine ant Linepithema humile

Rosset

Keller

Chapuisat

2005

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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Genetic diversity might increase the performance of social groups by improving task efficiency or disease resistance, but direct experimental tests of these hypotheses are rare. We manipulated the level of genetic diversity in colonies of the Argentine ant Linepithema humile, and then recorded the short-term task efficiency of these experimental colonies. The efficiency of low and high genetic diversity colonies did not differ significantly for any of the following tasks: exploring a new territory, foraging, moving to a new nest site, or removing corpses. The tests were powerful enough to detect large effects, but may have failed to detect small differences. Indeed, observed effect sizes were generally small, except for the time to create a trail during nest emigration. In addition, genetic diversity had no statistically significant impact on the number of workers, males and females produced by the colony, but these tests had low power. Higher genetic diversity also did not result in lower variance in task efficiency and productivity. In contrast to genetic diversity, colony size was positively correlated with the efficiency at performing most tasks and with colony productivity. Altogether, these results suggest that genetic diversity does not strongly improve short-term task efficiency in L. humile, but that worker number is a key factor determining the success of this invasive species.

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Section: Low and High Genetic Diversity Coloniesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental manipulation of colony genetic diversity had no effect on short-term task efficiency in the Argentine ant Linepithema humile

Rosset

Keller

Chapuisat

2005

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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“…High queen turnover could stem from two causesrelatively brief queen lifespans (Elmes 1980 ;Keller et al 1989 ;Elmes & Petal 1990 ;Evans 1996) and the frequent departure of queens to form new colonies by budding (Elmes & Petal 1990 ;. In leptothoracines, as in M rmica Evans 1996), its effects would be exaggerated by the relatively long developmental times of brood .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parentage, reproductive skew and queen turnover in a multiple–queen ant analysed with microsatellites

Bourke

Green

Bruford

1997

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

104

119

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SUMMARYWe investigated the fine genetic structure of colonies of the ant, Leptothorax acer orum, to examine how queens share parentage (skew) in a social insect with multiple queens (polygyny). Overall, 494 individuals from eight polygynous field colonies were typed at up to seven microsatellite loci each. The first main finding was that surprisingly many sexual progeny (60 % of young queens and 49 % of young males) were not the offspring of the extant queens within their colonies. This implies that a high turnover (brief reproductive lifespan) of queens within colonies could be an important feature of polygyny. The second main result was that in most colonies relatedness among sexual progeny fell significantly below that expected among full siblings, proving that these progeny were produced by more than one singly-mated queen, but that skew in two colonies where the data permitted its calculation was moderate to high. However, relative to a German population, the study population is characterized by low queen-queen relatedness and low skew in female production, which is in line with the predictions of skew theory.

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“…However, access to brood also gives the adult workers more power. In several polygynous ant species, workers starve, attack or cannibalize queenpotential larvae (Brian 1973;Vargo & Fletcher 1986a,b;Edwards 1987Edwards , 1991Keller et al 1989;Vargo & Passera 1991;Keller & Passera 1992). This either leads to the larvae being killed, or it may cause them to develop into workers rather than queens (Bourke & Ratnieks 1999).…”

Section: The Devil In the Detailsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power over reproduction in social Hymenoptera

Beekman

Ratnieks

2003

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B

102

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Inclusive fitness theory has been very successful in predicting and explaining much of the observed variation in the reproductive characteristics of insect societies. For example, the theory correctly predicts sexratio biasing by workers in relation to the queen's mating frequency. However, within an insect society there are typically multiple reproductive optima, each corresponding to the interest of different individual(s) or parties of interest. When multiple optima occur, which party's interests prevail? Presumably, the interests of the party with the greatest 'power'; the ability to do or act. This article focuses on factors that influence power over colony reproduction. In particular, we seek to identify the principles that may cause different parties of interest to have greater or lesser power. In doing this, we discuss power from two different angles. On the one hand, we discuss general factors based upon non-idiosyncratic biological features (e.g. information, access to and ability to process food) that are likely to be important to all social Hymenoptera. On the other hand, we discuss idiosyncratic factors that depend upon the biology of a taxon at any hierarchical level. We propose that a better understanding of the diversity of reproductive characteristics of insect societies will come from combining inclusive fitness theory with a wide range of other factors that affect relative power in a conflict situation.

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Queen execution in the Argentine ant, Iridomyrmex humilis

Cited by 94 publications

References 26 publications

Experimental manipulation of colony genetic diversity had no effect on short-term task efficiency in the Argentine ant Linepithema humile

Experimental manipulation of colony genetic diversity had no effect on short-term task efficiency in the Argentine ant Linepithema humile

Parentage, reproductive skew and queen turnover in a multiple–queen ant analysed with microsatellites

Power over reproduction in social Hymenoptera

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