One hundred and fifty one colonies of the ant L. acervorum comprising 815 queens were sampled in dry pine forest at nine sites in SE Sweden. 63°70 of the colonies contained more than one queen and of these 79% had more than one egg-laying (functional) queen, i.e. were polygynous. By using the electrophoretic variation at the PG1 locus a high overall relatedness (0.4) among queens from the same colony was found indicating that young queens are adopted by their mother nest. No spatial microdifferentiation in allele frequencies could be detected and it thus seems that despite restricted movements of queens there is a free gene flow in the populations.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.