Headshot of a Formica cinerea queen. Credit score: Giulia Scarparo/UCR
An ant colony is sustained via complicated social dynamics, with every member—the queen, males and employees (sterile females)—contributing to the larger group. Some species add complexity to this dynamic with the addition of moderately small queens.
Researchers at UC Riverside tackled why these further queens are current by specializing in complicated genetic buildings, referred to as supergenes, in the neighborhood. These supergenes management the origin and duplication of the petite queens in a single ant species. The outcomes of their examine can be found within the December challenge of the journal Present Biology.
“We had been intrigued by the tiny queens,” stated senior writer Jessica Purcell, affiliate professor within the Division of Entomology at UCR. “It is a fantastic system (multiple-queen ant colonies) to review the evolution of supergenes, which exist in lots of varieties of organisms.”
Supergenes differ in dimension however encompass a cluster of genes on the identical chromosome which are linked. The supergene suppresses recombination—a typical shuffling of genes throughout cell division—and transmits and preserves the structure of the supergene from era to era. These mega genes are related to traits, or phenotypes, expressed by many organisms, together with migratory patterns in fish and birds and the variety of queens in an ant colony.
Whereas not frequent in all ant colonies, Purcell and her colleagues targeted on the small queens in a single ant species, Formica cinerea, which is frequent all through Europe, spanning from Spain to western Siberia and from Scandinavia to the Balkans. These ants are helpful, fortunately spending their days munching on spiders, mites and even sugary aphid poop.
The analysis workforce recognized the presence of two supergenes that improve the colony queen rely and management queen dimension.
The queen is a very powerful and largest ant within the colony. The queen has wings and might fly away, however her major function is to put eggs to develop generations of employees, males, and her successor. Staff reside for about six months and spend their time foraging for meals and caring for the brood. Males have a shorter lifespan; they hardly ever depart the colony and mate as soon as with a future queen.
Tiny queens receive their energy from a supergene that shaped about 23 million years in the past and determines whether or not colonies have one queen or a number of queens. The researchers discovered one other supergene chargeable for ant dimension. The 2 supergenes collectively produce further queens which are 20% smaller than a typical ant queen.
First writer Giulia Scarparo sampling Formica ants in South Dakota, USA, summer season, 2023. Credit score: Jessica Purcell/UCR
This pairing can have a substantial impact on the colony.
“Ants are social bugs and create enormous colonies the place nestmates are associated to one another, and colonies works properly collectively to lift their relations,” stated Giulia Scarparo, an entomology post-doctoral pupil and first writer of the examine. “In a polygyne (a number of queen) colony, the connection between nestmates is decrease. The presence of many unrelated nestmates can result in reproductive conflicts amongst employees. ”
The researchers counsel the conflicts that come up from these mixed supergenes might assist the colony develop and survive.
Establishing an impartial colony requires the queen to fly to a brand new location and use her physique reserves housed within the wing muscle tissues and physique fats to lift the primary brood of employees. This technique is dangerous and might result in the dying of the queen, and along with her the colony.
Tiny queens lack the vitality reserves to ascertain a brand new colony, however they will be part of current colonies. This raises new questions to think about relating to the continued cooperation amongst teams who will not be genetically associated.
“The invention of supergenes related to microgynes (small queens) is the primary discovery of this kind,” stated Scarparo. “We predict these sort of queens may be socially parasitic—social bugs that reap the benefits of different social bugs. Microgynes could possibly be a superb start line to grasp the evolution of social parasitism, and we might have a supergene driving this way of life.”
Purcell and Scarparo had been joined on this mission by Alan Brelsford, an assistant professor of biology, and Marie Palanchon, a graduate pupil in Purcell’s lab.
The article is titled “Social antagonism facilitates supergene growth in ants.”
Extra data:
Giulia Scarparo et al, Social antagonism facilitates supergene growth in ants, Present Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.10.049
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College of California – Riverside
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Supergene analysis solves the thriller of tiny ant queens (2024, March 28)
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