Genetic population structure in polygynous formica ants

Genetic population structure and dispersal patterns in Formica ants — a review

Human impact on boreal forests has been extensive during a fairly short evolutionary time scale. Character species of boreal forests, such as Formica ants, may face loss of genetic diversity, increasing inbreeding, and decreasing gene flow among extant habitat fragments owing to habitat loss and fragmentation. Here we review the genetic data on old-world boreal species of the genus Formica. In ...

Contrasting population genetic structure for workers and queens in the putatively unicolonial ant Formica exsecta.

The theory of inclusive fitness provides a powerful explanation for reproductive altruism in social insects, whereby workers gain inclusive fitness benefit by rearing the brood of related queens. Some ant species, however, have unicolonial population structures where multiple nests, each containing numerous queens, are interconnected and individuals move freely between nests. In such cases, nes...

Kinship and confl icts over male production in Formica ants

Learning walks and landmark guidance in wood ants (Formica rufa)

We have examined a behaviour pattern in wood ants which in some respects resembles and in other respects differs from the learning flights of bees and wasps. Wood ants returning to their nest from a newly discovered food source turn back and look at landmarks near to the feeder, but the feeder itself does not attract sustained fixations. The frequency of landmark inspections is highest when the...

Polygynous Ants: Ecological Repercussions of a Multi-queen Colony

Many recent studies of polygynous ants have focused on producing an ecological and reproductive cost-benefit analysis of polygynous systems in order to shed light on how or why it developed over the more common practice of monogyny. Polygyny, the practice of keeping multiple reproductive queens in one colony, has evolved in many ant species, some of which display both polygynous and monogynous ...