Titre
Low relatedness among cooperatively breeding workers of the greenhead ant Rhytidoponera metallica
Type
article
Institution
UNIL/CHUV/Unisanté + institutions partenaires
Périodique
Auteur(s)
Chapuisat, M.
Auteure/Auteur
Crozier, R.
Auteure/Auteur
Liens vers les personnes
Liens vers les unités
ISSN
1010-061X
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
2001
Volume
14
Numéro
4
Première page
564
Dernière page/numéro d’article
573
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Langue
anglais
Résumé
The greenhead ant Rhytidoponera metallica has long been recognized as posing a potential challenge to kin selection theory because it has large queenless colonies where apparently many of the morphological workers are mated and reproducing. However this species has never been studied genetically and important elements of its breeding system and kin structure remain uncertain. We used microsatellite markers to measure the relatedness among nestmates unravel the fine-scale population genetic structure and infer the breeding system of R. metallica. The genetic relatedness among worker nestmates is very low but significantly greater than zero (r = 0.082 +/- 0.015) which demonstrates that nests contain many distantly related breeders. The inbreeding coefficient is very close to and not significantly different from zero indicating random mating and lack of microgeographic genetic differentiation. On average. closely located nests are not more similar genetically than distant nests which is surprising as new colonies form by budding and female dispersal is restricted. Lack of inbreeding and absence of population viscosity indicates high gene flow mediated by males. Overall the genetic pattern detected in R. metallica suggests that a high number of moderately related workers mate with unrelated males from distant nests. This breeding system results in the lowest relatedness among nestmates reported for social insect species where breeders and helpers are not morphologically differentiated. [References: 69]
PID Serval
serval:BIB_2A0F5A1787A6
Open Access
Oui
Date de création
2008-01-24T18:22:41.474Z
Date de création dans IRIS
2025-05-20T16:25:02Z
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Nom
BIB_2A0F5A1787A6.P001.pdf
Version du manuscrit
preprint
Taille
227.74 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
PID Serval
serval:BIB_2A0F5A1787A6.P001
URN
urn:nbn:ch:serval-BIB_2A0F5A1787A68
Somme de contrôle
(MD5):a5b5f2020b257055cfc0248f46931ad6