Colony fission affects kinship in a social insect |
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Authors: | Perttu Seppä Ignacio Fernández-Escudero Niclas Gyllenstrand Pekka Pamilo |
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Institution: | 1.Department of Evolutionary Functional Genomics, EBC,Uppsala University,Uppsala,Sweden;2.Department of Biology,University of Oulu,Oulu,Finland;3.Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Unit, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences,University of Helsinki,Helsinki,Finland;4.Vall de Uixo,Spain |
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Abstract: | Establishment of new groups is an important step in the life history of a social species. Fissioning is a common mode not
only in group proliferation, for instance, as a regular part of the life cycle in the honey bee, but also when multiple females
reproduce in the same group, as in multiple-queen ant societies. We studied the genetic consequences of fissioning in the
ant Proformica longiseta, based on DNA microsatellites. In P. longiseta, new nests arise by fissioning from the old ones when they grow large, and the daughter nests consist of workers and queens
or queen pupae but never both. Our results show that fissioning is not entirely random with respect to kinship. Workers tend
to segregate along kin lines, but only when the initial relatedness in the parental nests is low. Workers in a daughter nest
also tend to be associated with closely related adult queens, whereas such an association is not detected between workers
and queen pupae. Most queens and workers are carried to the daughter nest by a specialized group of transporting workers,
suggesting active kin discrimination by them. Fissioning pattern in P. longiseta is different from that found in other social insects with regular fission (e.g., the honey bee, swarm-founding wasps), where
no fissioning along kin lines has been found. It does, however, resemble fissioning in another group of social animals: primates. |
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Keywords: | Colony fission DNA microsatellites Genetic relatedness Proformica longiseta Social group |
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