Giehr, Julia and Wallner, Jennifer and Senninger, Lisa and Ruhland, Katja and Krueger, Theresa and Heinze, Juergen (2020) Substantial direct fitness gains of workers in a highly eusocial ant. MOLECULAR ECOLOGY, 29 (19). pp. 3720-3730. ISSN 0962-1083, 1365-294X
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Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness suggests that helpers in animal societies gain fitness indirectly by increasing the reproductive performance of a related beneficiary. Helpers in cooperatively breeding birds, mammals and primitively eusocial wasps may additionally obtain direct fitness through inheriting the nest or mating partner of the former reproductive. Here, we show that also workers of a highly eusocial ant may achieve considerable direct fitness by producing males in both queenless and queenright colonies. We investigated the reproductive success of workers of the antTemnothorax crassispinusin nature and the laboratory by dissecting workers and determining the origin of males by microsatellite analysis. We show that workers are capable of activating their ovaries and successfully producing their sons independently of the presence of a queen. Genotypes revealed that at least one fifth of the males in natural queenright colonies were not offspring of the queen. Most worker-produced males could be assigned to workers that were unrelated to the queen, suggesting egg-laying by drifting workers.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | INTRASPECIFIC PARASITISM; SOCIAL PARASITISM; COLONY STRUCTURE; KIN STRUCTURE; REPRODUCTION; HYMENOPTERA; QUEEN; RECOGNITION; RELATEDNESS; DOMINANCE; altruism; ants; direct fitness; male production; Temnothorax; worker reproduction |
| Subjects: | 500 Science > 570 Life sciences 500 Science > 590 Zoological sciences |
| Divisions: | Biology, Preclinical Medicine > Institut für Zoologie Biology, Preclinical Medicine > Institut für Zoologie > Zoologie/Evolutionsbiologie (Prof. Dr. Jürgen Heinze) |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Mar 2021 07:16 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Mar 2021 07:16 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/43946 |
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