Disentangling the mechanisms linking dispersal and sociality in supergene-mediated ant social forms

The coevolution between dispersal and sociality can lead to linked polymorphisms in both traits, which may favour the emergence of supergenes. Supergenes have recently been found to control social organization in several ant lineages. Whether and how these “social supergenes” also control traits related to dispersal is yet unknown. Our goal here was to get a comprehensive view of the dispersal mechanisms associated to supergene-controlled alternative social forms in the ant Formica selysi. We measured the production and emission of young females and males by single-queen (monogyne) and multiple-queen (polygyne) colonies, the composition of mating aggregations, and the frequency of crosses within and between social forms in the wild. We found that males and females from alternative social forms did not display strong differences in their propensity to leave the nest and disperse, nor in their mating behaviour. Instead, the social forms differed substantially in sex allocation. Monogyne c...扩散与社会性之间的协同进化可导致两类性状出现连锁多态性，这或许会推动超基因（supergene）的形成。近期研究发现，超基因可调控多个蚁类支系的社会组织结构。但这类"社会超基因"是否以及如何调控与扩散相关的性状，目前仍未明确。本研究旨在全面解析西氏林蚁（Formica selysi）中超基因调控的两种对立社会型相关的扩散机制。我们对单蚁后（单后群，monogyne）与多蚁后（多后群，polygyne）蚁群产生并释放的处女雌蚁和雄蚁数量进行了测定，同时统计了交配聚集群的组成，以及野外环境中社会型内与社会型间交配事件的发生频率。研究发现，来自两种对立社会型的雄蚁与雌蚁，在离巢扩散倾向以及交配行为上均未表现出显著差异。与之相反，两种社会型在性分配上存在显著差异。单后群（monogyne）c...