Abstract
High relatedness among society members is believed important for the evolution of highly cooperative behaviours, yet queens of many social insects mate with multiple males which reduces nestmate relatedness and imposes also direct costs on queens. While theoretical models have suggested explanations for this puzzling queen behaviour, empirical studies fail to provide consistent answers especially for species with moderate levels of multiple mating. This may result from multiple mating only conferring benefits in some environments, as suggested by recent genetic variance theory and considerations on types of traits, direct costs and benefits. All concur in an expectation of higher levels of multiple mating in more complex or milder environments, and we perform a first, broad test of this idea by comparing mating strategies of queens in Lasius niger ants from northern (harsh, cold stressed) and southern populations (milder, greater bio-complexity). First, we collected new genetic data from Ireland and Southern France and then compared these to data on Swiss and Swedish populations. Queens from northern populations were near exclusively single mated and even at times inbred (in Ireland), whereas southern queens showed high levels of multiple mating, leading to more genetically diverse colonies in the south. Equally, paternity skew was greater in the north, as expected if northern queens only remate when their first mate transfers few sperm. Our findings are consistent with the idea that environment type may affect mating strategies in social insects and calls for an exploration of such effects.
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Acknowledgments
Our work was funded by a start up grant to E.J.F. from Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY), a Professional Staff Congress of CUNY Research Award to E.J.F. (grant #61208-00 39) and a Queens College Research Enhancement Award to E.J.F. (grant #90927-08-08). Part of our work was carried out using equipment at the core facility of the Biology Department at Queens College, CUNY. We would like to thank A. Tsiola for storing samples, G.W. Jackman for help with the DNA extractions, P. Nonacs for assistance with the Skew Calculator, and W.O.H. Hughes, D.C. Kronauer, M. Baker, D. Lohman and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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The experiments described here complied with current laws of the European Union and the United States of America.
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Corley, M., Fjerdingstad, E.J. Mating strategies of queens in Lasius niger ants—is environment type important?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 65, 889–897 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-010-1089-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-010-1089-7