Myrmecia sample locations and microsatellite data

Full description

Geographic location and microsatellite data for 20 sampled colonies (23 nests) from Qian Z, Schlüns H, Schlick-Steiner BC, Steiner FM, Robson SKA, Schlüns EA, Crozier RH (2011) Intraspecific support for the polygyny-vs.-polyandry hypothesis in the bulldog ant Myrmecia brevinoda.

Abstract [Related Publication]: The number of queens per colony and the number of matings per queen are the most important determinants of the genetic structure of ant colonies, and understanding their interrelationship is essential to the study of social evolution. The polygyny-versus-polyandry hypothesis argues that polygyny and polyandry should be negatively associated since both can result in increased intracolonial genetic variability and have costs. However, evidence for this long-debated hypothesis has been lacking at the intraspecific level. Here, we investigated the colony genetic structure in the Australian bulldog ant Myrmecia brevinoda. The numbers of queens per colony varied from 1 to 6. Nestmate queens within polygynous colonies were on average related (rqq = 0.171±0.019), but the overall relatedness between queens and their mates was indistinguishable from zero (rqm = 0.037±0.030). Queens were inferred to mate with 1 to 10 males. A lack of genetic isolation by distance among nests indicated the prevalence of independent colony foundation. In accordance with the polygyny-versus-polyandry hypothesis, the number of queens per colony was significantly negatively associated with the estimated number of matings (Spearman rank correlation R = -0.490, P = 0.028). This study thus provides rare intraspecific evidence for the polygyny-versus-polyandry hypothesis. We suggest that high costs of multiple matings and the strong effect of multiple mating on intracolonial genetic diversity may be essential to the negative association between polygyny and polyandry, and that any attempt to empirically test this hypothesis should place emphasis upon these two key underlying aspects.

The full methodology is available in the publication shown in the Related Publications link below.

Notes

This dataset is available from Dryad in MS Excel (.xls) format. Dryad data package: Qian Z, Schlüns H, Schlick-Steiner BC, Steiner FM, Robson SKA, Schlüns EA, Crozier RH (2011) Data from: Intraspecific support for the polygyny-vs.-polyandry hypothesis in the bulldog ant Myrmecia brevinoda. Dryad Digital Repository. http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.rk0pq