Colony Founding Behavior of Some Desert Ants: Geographic Variation in Metrosis

Rissing, Steven W.; Johnson, Robert A.; Martin, John W.

doi:10.1155/2000/20135

Cited by 32 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 10 publications

(6 reference statements)

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“…For example, in North American ants of the genus Myrmecocystus, which can be regarded as the ecological equivalent to Melophorus [24], founding queens are often joined by other queens after they have excavated the first nest chamber alone [25]. Also, some desert ants in North America, including Myrmecocystus, display considerable geographic variation in their mode of colony founding [26]. We observed a total of 21 dealate queens at their attempts to establish new colonies (all on 21 January).…”

Section: Colony Foundingmentioning

confidence: 84%

Nest Relocation and Colony Founding in the Australian Desert Ant,Melophorus bagotiLubbock (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Schultheiss

Schwarz

Wystrach

2010

Psyche: A Journal of Entomology

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Even after years of research on navigation in the Red Honey Ant, Melophorus bagoti, much of its life history remains elusive. Here, we present observations on nest relocation and the reproductive and founding stages of colonies. Nest relocation is possibly aided by trail laying behaviour, which is highly unusual for solitary foraging desert ants. Reproduction occurs in synchronised mating flights, which are probably triggered by rain. Queens may engage in multiple matings, and there is circumstantial evidence that males are chemically attracted to queens. After the mating flight, the queens found new colonies independently and singly. Excavation of these founding colonies reveals first insights into their structure.

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Section: Colony Foundingmentioning

confidence: 84%

Nest Relocation and Colony Founding in the Australian Desert Ant,Melophorus bagotiLubbock (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Schultheiss

Schwarz

Wystrach

2010

Psyche: A Journal of Entomology

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“…versicolor may be more frequently punctuated by genetic changes because the polygynous nest-founding of Ac. versicolor [16] creates frequent opportunities for co-cultivation of genetically differentiated Attamyces strains in incipient gardens (i.e. frequent opportunities for genetic recombination).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the Southern Hemisphere, leaf-cutter ants reach 448 S latitude [14]. In the Northern Hemisphere, Atta texana reaches 338 N latitude in north-central Texas and northeastern Louisiana [15; this study] and Acromyrmex versicolor reaches almost 368 N latitude in northwestern Arizona [16]. It is unknown whether leaf-cutter ants dispersed into the North American continent before or after the closing of the Isthmus of Panama approximately 1-3 Myr ago [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Frontier mutualism: coevolutionary patterns at the northern range limit of the leaf-cutter ant–fungus symbiosis

et al. 2011

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Tropical leaf-cutter ants cultivate the fungus Attamyces bromatificus in a many-to-one, diffuse coevolutionary relationship where ant and fungal partners re-associate frequently over time. To evaluate whether ant -Attamyces coevolution is more specific (tighter) in peripheral populations, we characterized the host-specificities of Attamyces genotypes at their northern, subtropical range limits (southern USA, Mexico and Cuba). Population-genetic patterns of northern Attamyces reveal features that have so far not been observed in the diffusely coevolving, tropical ant -Attamyces associations. These unique features include (i) cases of one-to-one ant -Attamyces specialization that tighten coevolution at the northern frontier; (ii) distributions of genetically identical Attamyces clones over large areas (up to 81 000 km 2 , approx. the area of Ireland, Austria or Panama); (iii) admixture rates between Attamyces lineages that appear lower in northern than in tropical populations; and (iv) long-distance gene flow of Attamyces across a dispersal barrier for leaf-cutter ants (ocean between mainland North America and Cuba). The latter suggests that Attamyces fungi may occasionally disperse independently of the ants, contrary to the traditional assumption that Attamyces fungi depend entirely on leaf-cutter queens for dispersal. Peripheral populations in Argentina or at mid-elevation sites in the Andes may reveal additional regional variants in ant -Attamyces coevolution. Studies of such populations are most likely to inform models of coextinctions of obligate mutualistic partners that are doubly stressed by habitat marginality and by environmental change.

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“…This species shows variation across populations in the behavior of newly-mated queens during colony founding, making it an ideal species in which to investigate the evolution of social behavior (Rissing et al 2000). Queens in a central Arizona population exclusively found colonies solitarily (haplometrosis), as is typical for the genus (Hölldobler 1976).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Queens in a central Arizona population exclusively found colonies solitarily (haplometrosis), as is typical for the genus (Hölldobler 1976). However, queens in a southern California population form joint starting nests (pleometrosis), containing 2-30 generally unrelated co-foundresses (Rissing et al 2000;S. Helms Cahan, unpublished data).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Division of labor and the evolution of task sharing in queen associations of the harvester ant Pogonomyrmex californicus

Cahan

Fewell

2004

Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology

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Division of labor is a key factor in the ecological success of social groups. Recent work suggests that division of labor can emerge even without specific adaptations for task specialization and that it can appear in incipient social groups as a self-organizational property. We investigated experimentally how selection and self-organization may interact during the evolution of division of labor by examining task performance in groups of normally solitary versus normally social ant queens. We created social pairs of colony-founding queens from two populations of the ant Pogonomyrmex californicus, one in which queens are normally solitary and one in which queens form foundress groups, and observed their behavior during nest excavation. In both populations, one of the two queens usually performed most of the excavation, becoming the excavation specialist. We could predict which queen would become the specialist based on their relative propensities to perform the task in other contexts, consistent with a variancebased model of task specialization. The occurrence of specialization even when group members were not adapted to social life suggests that division of labor may well have been present in incipient queen groups. However, division of labor can result in cost skew among group members, and thus, paradoxically, within-group selection may constrain or even reduce specialization. Consistent with this effect, pairs of normally solitary queens were significantly more asymmetrical in their task performance than normally social pairs, in which both queens nearly always performed the behavior to some degree.

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Colony Founding Behavior of Some Desert Ants: Geographic Variation in Metrosis

Cited by 32 publications

References 10 publications

Nest Relocation and Colony Founding in the Australian Desert Ant,Melophorus bagotiLubbock (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Nest Relocation and Colony Founding in the Australian Desert Ant,Melophorus bagotiLubbock (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Frontier mutualism: coevolutionary patterns at the northern range limit of the leaf-cutter ant–fungus symbiosis

Division of labor and the evolution of task sharing in queen associations of the harvester ant Pogonomyrmex californicus

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