Abstract
Ant colonies may have a single or several reproductive queens (monogyny and polygyny, respectively). In polygynous colonies, colony reproduction may occur by budding, forming multinest, polydomous colonies. In most cases, budding leads to strong genetic structuring within populations, and positive relatedness among nestmates. However, in a few cases, polydomous populations may be unicolonial, with no structuring and intra-nest relatedness approaching zero. We investigated the spatial organisation and genetic structure of a polygynous, polydomous population of Formica truncorum in Finland. F. truncorum shifts nest sites between hibernation and the reproductive season, which raises the following question: are colonies maintained as genetic entities throughout the seasons, or is the population unicolonial throughout the season? Using nest-specific marking and five microsatellite loci, we found a high degree of mixing between individuals of the population, and no evidence for a biologically significant genetic structuring. The nestmate relatedness was also indistinguishable from zero. Taken together, the results show that the population is unicolonial. In addition, we found that the population has undergone a recent bottleneck, suggesting that the entire population may have been founded by a very limited number of females. The precise causes for unicoloniality in this species remain open, but we discuss the potential influence of intra-specific competition, disintegration of recognition cues and the particular hibernation habits of this species.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Katja Bargum, Christine Johnson, Soile Kupiainen, Kristian Lindqvist, Petro Pynnönen, Elina Ranta, Ayman Abu Saleh and Jaime de Vizcaya for their help in the field and in the laboratory, and to Cathy Liautard, Marie-Hélène Muller, Jes Pedersen, and especially Pekka Pamilo, for fruitful discussions and comments on early versions of this paper. We also thank Niclas Gyllenstrand, Pekka Pamilo and Perttu Seppä for allowing us to perform a bottleneck analysis on their data set, Marita Rosengren for “logistic” support and three anonymous referees, whose comments greatly improved the quality of this paper. This work was funded by the Center for International Mobility of Finland (CIMO), and by the Academy of Finland (grants 42725, 173227 and 206505). Marianne Elias acknowledges the financial support provided through the European Community’s Improving Human Potential Programme under contract HPRN-CT-2000-00052, INSECTS network, and under contract HPMF-CT-2002-01781 (Marie Curie individual fellowship). The experiments carried out in this study comply with the current laws of Finland.
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Rainer Rosengren is deceased
Communicated by R.F.A. Moritz
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Elias, M., Rosengren, R. & Sundström, L. Seasonal polydomy and unicoloniality in a polygynous population of the red wood ant Formica truncorum. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 57, 339–349 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-004-0864-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-004-0864-8