Queen dominance in the polygynous ant, Solenopsis invicta (Buren) (Hymenoptera:Formicidae) /
Dominance hierarchy is proposed to play an important role in regulating the colony organization in the polygynous ant society. In some ant species, the formation of dominance hierarchies is through aggressive fighting among the dominant and subordinate reproductive females, whereas in other species...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
[Place of publication not identified] :
[publisher not identified] ;
1996.
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=739363171&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=2945&RQT=309&VName=PQD |
| Summary: | Dominance hierarchy is proposed to play an important role in regulating the colony organization in the polygynous ant society. In some ant species, the formation of dominance hierarchies is through aggressive fighting among the dominant and subordinate reproductive females, whereas in other species multiple queens remain in close contact and exhibit a peaceful relationship. Our studies with queen dominance revealed that a dominance hierarchy exists among queens in polygynous nest of Solenopsis invicta. The dominant queen was characterized by having a significantly higher attractiveness to workers than subordinate queens, while the subordinate queens were nearly equivalent in social rank, showing no significant difference in their attractiveness to workers. This is the first evidence that dominance is linked to the queen's, attractive status to workers. Further investigations of colony organization demonstrated that the attractiveness of individual queens to workers in polygynous S. invicta played a critical role in establishing and maintaining the dominance hierarchy. The higher attractiveness to workers resulted in a dominant queen which had a higher frequency of trophallaxis as she received preferential feeding from workers. Furthermore, the trophic advantage resulted in the reproductive success of the dominant queen, so that she had a higher oviposition rate than subordinate queens. However, dominance was not associated with queen weight, and coexisting queens in polygynous colonies did not show any evidence of aggressive fighting with each other. In order to characterize the genetic structure to deepen our understanding of colony organization and formation of dominant hierarchy in polygynous S. invicta, microsatellite markers were developed for investigating the genetic variability among the individual queens. Three amplified loci were found to be polymorphic and produced scorable allelic variations with an average heterozygosity of 0.71. Although microsatellite data show some level of variation among the individuals, because of the limited number of samples scored, we did not have enough evidence to demonstrate that the genetic variability of individuals from the same colony was lower than individuals from different colonies. Thus we could not draw a conclusion about the exact genetic relatedness of co-existing queens. Nevertheless, successful isolation of polymorphic microsatellite markers provides a new potential for our future sociogenetic structure study. |
|---|---|
| Item Description: | Vita. "Major Subject: Entomology". |
| Physical Description: | xii, 109 leaves : illustrations ; 28 cm. Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilms Inc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references: pages 96-108. |