Abstract
We investigated worker policing by egg eating in the ponerine ant Pachycondyla inversa, a species with morphologically distinct queens and workers. Colonies were split into one half with the queen and one half without. Workers in queenless colony fragments started laying unfertilized male eggs after three weeks. Worker-laid eggs and queen-laid eggs were introduced into five other queenright colonies with a single queen and three colonies with multiple queens, and their fate was observed for 30 min. Significantly more worker-laid eggs (range of 35-62%, mean of 46%) than queen-laid eggs (range of 5-31%, mean of 15%) were eaten by workers in single-queen colonies, and the same trend was seen in multiple-queen colonies. This seems to be the first well-documented study of ants with a distinct caste polymorphism to show that workers kill worker-laid eggs in preference to queen-laid eggs. Chemical analyses showed that the surfaces of queen-laid and worker-laid eggs have different chemical profiles as a result of different relative proportions of several hydrocarbons. Such differences might provide the information necessary for differential treatment of eggs. One particular alkane, 3,11-dimeC27, was significantly more abundant on the surfaces of queen-laid eggs. This substance is also the most abundant compound on the cuticles of egg layers.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (202.5 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Chapuis M, Keller L. Testing kin selection with sex allocation data in eusocial hymenoptera . Heredity (Edinb) 1999 May;82(Pt 5):473–478. doi: 10.1038/sj.hdy.6885340. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- D'Ettorre Patrizia, Heinze Jürgen, Schulz Claudia, Francke Wittko, Ayasse Manfred. Does she smell like a queen? Chemoreception of a cuticular hydrocarbon signal in the ant Pachycondyla inversa. J Exp Biol. 2004 Mar;207(Pt 7):1085–1091. doi: 10.1242/jeb.00865. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Foster K. R., Ratnieks F. L. Convergent evolution of worker policing by egg eating in the honeybee and common wasp. Proc Biol Sci. 2001 Jan 22;268(1463):169–174. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2000.1346. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Gobin B, Billen J, Peeters C. Policing behaviour towards virgin egg layers in a polygynous ponerine ant. Anim Behav. 1999 Nov;58(5):1117–1122. doi: 10.1006/anbe.1999.1245. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Gobin Bruno, Heinze Jürgen, Strätz Michaela, Roces Flavio. The energetic cost of reproductive conflicts in the ant Pachycondyla obscuricornis. J Insect Physiol. 2003 Aug;49(8):747–752. doi: 10.1016/s0022-1910(03)00111-2. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Kolmer K., Heinze J. Rank orders and division of labour among unrelated cofounding ant queens. Proc Biol Sci. 2000 Sep 7;267(1454):1729–1734. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2000.1202. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Monnin Thibaud, Ratnieks Francis L. W., Jones Graeme R., Beard Richard. Pretender punishment induced by chemical signalling in a queenless ant. Nature. 2002 Sep 5;419(6902):61–65. doi: 10.1038/nature00932. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- doi: 10.1098/rspb.1999.0858. [DOI] [PMC free article] [Google Scholar]