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A life history continuum in the males of a Neotropical ant assemblage: refuting the sperm vessel hypothesis

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Abstract

Animal lifespans range from a few days to many decades, and this life history diversity is especially pronounced in ants. Queens can live for decades. Males, in contrast, are often assumed to act as ephemeral sperm delivery vessels that die after a brief mating flight—a view developed from studies of lekking species in temperate habitats. In a tropical ant assemblage, we found that males can live days to months outside the nest, a trait hypothesized to be associated with female calling, another common mating system. We combined feeding experiments with respirometry to show that lifespan can be enhanced over 3 months by feeding outside the nest. In one focal female calling species, Ectatomma ruidum, feeding enhanced male lifespan, but not sperm content. Extended lifespans outside the nest suggest stronger than expected selection on premating traits of male ants, although the ways these traits shape male mating success remain poorly understood.

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Acknowledgements

This project was funded by the National Science Foundation under the grant DEB-0842038 to A. Kay and M. Kaspari. DF was supported by an NSF REU on the same grant. JZS thanks WR Tschinkel for the instruction on the finer points of male ant dissection and SPA den Boer for instruction in the DAPI sperm staining method. JJ Boomsma and three anonymous reviewers provided many excellent suggestions for improving this manuscript. DD Donoso helped verify the identification of males.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA

    Jonathan Z. Shik

  2. Department of Zoology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, 73019, USA

    Deana Flatt & Michael Kaspari

  3. Department of Biology, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN, 55105, USA

    Adam Kay

  4. Graduate Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, 73019, USA

    Michael Kaspari

  5. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Balboa, Panama

    Michael Kaspari

Authors
  1. Jonathan Z. Shik
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  2. Deana Flatt
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  3. Adam Kay
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  4. Michael Kaspari
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan Z. Shik.

Additional information

Communicated by: Sven Thatje

Electronic supplementary materials

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Table S1

Raw metabolic data for male ants with bibliography for data from the literature (DOCX 107 kb)

Appendix S1

Methodological details for respirometry and sperm counts (DOCX 166 kb)

Fig. S1

Phylogenetic analyses of scaling of metabolic rate (μW) with male mass (mg). Phylogenetic tree used to calculate contrasts and figure and plot used to calculate statistics (PDF 338 kb)

Fig. S2

Phylogenetic analysis of the scaling of mean and maximum longevity (days) when provided sucrose solution with body mass (mg). Phylogenetic tree used to calculate contrasts and figure and plot used to calculate statistics (PDF 247 kb)

Fig. S3

Comparison of pre- and post-flight testes for males of Ectatomma ruidum (PDF 7426 kb)

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Shik, J.Z., Flatt, D., Kay, A. et al. A life history continuum in the males of a Neotropical ant assemblage: refuting the sperm vessel hypothesis. Naturwissenschaften 99, 191–197 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-012-0884-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-012-0884-6

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