No supergene despite social polymorphism in the big-headed ant Pheidole pallidula

Ant colonies ancestrally contained one queen and her non-reproductive workers. This is also the case for many but not all colonies of the Mediterranean big-headed ant Pheidole pallidula. Indeed, this species also has a derived form of social organization with multiple reproductive queens in the colo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inbioRxiv
Main Authors Favreau, Emeline, Lebas, Claude, Stolle, Eckart, Priyam, Anurag, Pracana, Rodrigo, Aron, Serge, Wurm, Yannick
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Cold Spring Harbor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 09.12.2022
Subjects
Colonies
Genetic analysis
Pheidole pallidula
Polymorphism
Population genetics
Queens
Recombination
Social organization
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Summary:Ant colonies ancestrally contained one queen and her non-reproductive workers. This is also the case for many but not all colonies of the Mediterranean big-headed ant Pheidole pallidula. Indeed, this species also has a derived form of social organization with multiple reproductive queens in the colony. The co-existence of two social forms also independently evolved in three other lineages of ants. In each of those lineages, variants of a supergene region of suppressed recombination determine social form. This is likely because supergene regions can link advantageous combinations of alleles from multiple loci. We thus hypothesized that a supergene region also determines colony queen number in the big-headed ant. To test this, we performed extensive population genetic analyses and genomic comparisons. We find no evidence of a supergene-like region with differentiation between single- and multiple-queen colonies. Our results show that a complex social polymorphism can evolve and be maintained without supergenes.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.Footnotes* https://wurmlab.com/data
DOI:10.1101/2022.12.06.519286