Abstract
The New World honey ant species Myrmecocystus mimicus is well known for its highly stereotyped territorial tournaments, and for the raids on conspecific nests that can lead to intraspecific slavery. Our results from mitochondrial and nuclear markers show that the raided brood emerges in the raiding colony and is subsequently incorporated into the colony's worker force. We also found enslaved conspecifics in a second honey ant species, M. depilis, the sister taxon of M. mimicus, which occurs in sympatry with M. mimicus at the study site. Colonies of this species furthermore contained raided M. mimicus workers. Both species have an effective mating frequency that is not significantly different from 1. This study provides genetic evidence for facultative intra- and interspecific slavery in the genus Myrmecocystus. Slavery in ants has evolved repeatedly and supposedly by different means. We propose that, in honey ants, secondary contact between two closely related species that both exhibit intraspecific slavery gave rise to an early form of facultative interspecific slavery.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (196.7 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Crozier R. H., Crozier Y. C. The mitochondrial genome of the honeybee Apis mellifera: complete sequence and genome organization. Genetics. 1993 Jan;133(1):97–117. doi: 10.1093/genetics/133.1.97. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Gadau J., Heinze J., Hölldobler B., Schmid M. Population and colony structure of the carpenter ant Camponotus floridanus. Mol Ecol. 1996 Dec;5(6):785–792. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294x.1996.tb00374.x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hölldobler B., Lumsden C. J. Territorial strategies in ants. Science. 1980 Nov 14;210(4471):732–739. doi: 10.1126/science.210.4471.732. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hölldobler B. Tournaments and slavery in a desert ant. Science. 1976 May 28;192(4242):912–914. doi: 10.1126/science.192.4242.912. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Lenoir A., D'Ettorre P., Errard C., Hefetz A. Chemical ecology and social parasitism in ants. Annu Rev Entomol. 2001;46:573–599. doi: 10.1146/annurev.ento.46.1.573. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Lowe Roger M., Ward Seamus A., Crozier Ross H. The evolution of parasites from their hosts: intra- and interspecific parasitism and Emery's rule. Proc Biol Sci. 2002 Jun 22;269(1497):1301–1305. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2002.2008. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Steger G. Thermal denaturation of double-stranded nucleic acids: prediction of temperatures critical for gradient gel electrophoresis and polymerase chain reaction. Nucleic Acids Res. 1994 Jul 25;22(14):2760–2768. doi: 10.1093/nar/22.14.2760. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Stuart R. J., Alloway T. M. Territoriality and the origin of slave raiding in leptothoracine ants. Science. 1982 Mar 5;215(4537):1262–1263. doi: 10.1126/science.215.4537.1262. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]