Non-nest mate discrimination and clonal colony structure in the parthenogenetic ant Cerapachys biroi

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Version: Final published version
Serval ID
serval:BIB_243C15F4DEDA
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Non-nest mate discrimination and clonal colony structure in the parthenogenetic ant Cerapachys biroi
Journal
Behavioral Ecology
Author(s)
Kronauer D.J.C., Tsuji K., Pierce N.E., Keller L.
ISSN
1045-2249
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2013
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
24
Number
3
Pages
617-622
Language
english
Abstract
Understanding the interplay between cooperation and conflict in social groups is a major goal of biology. One important factor is genetic relatedness, and animal societies are usually composed of related but genetically different individuals, setting the stage for conflicts over reproductive allocation. Recently, however, it has been found that several ant species reproduce predominantly asexually. Although this can potentially give rise to clonal societies, in the few well-studied cases, colonies are often chimeric assemblies of different genotypes, due to worker drifting or colony fusion. In the ant Cerapachys biroi, queens are absent and all individuals reproduce via thelytokous parthenogenesis, making this species an ideal study system of asexual reproduction and its consequences for social dynamics. Here, we show that colonies in our study population on Okinawa, Japan, recognize and effectively discriminate against foreign workers, especially those from unrelated asexual lineages. In accord with this finding, colonies never contained more than a single asexual lineage and average pairwise genetic relatedness within colonies was extremely high (r = 0.99). This implies that the scope for social conflict in C. biroi is limited, with unusually high potential for cooperation and altruism.
Keywords
aggression, asexuality, chimera, cooperation, Formicidae, thelytoky
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
11/12/2012 15:12
Last modification date
20/08/2019 13:02
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