Wolbachia-infected pharaoh ant colonies have higher egg production, metabolic rate, and worker survival

Wolbachia is a widespread endosymbiotic bacteria with diverse phenotypic effects on its insect hosts, ranging from parasitic to mutualistic. Wolbachia also commonly infects social insects, where it faces unique challenges associated with its hosts’ caste-based reproductive division of labor and colony living. Here we dissect the benefits and costs of Wolbachia infection on life-history traits of the invasive pharaoh ant, Monomorium pharaonis. Pharaoh ants are relatively short-lived and show natural variation in Wolbachia infection between colonies, thereby making them an ideal model system for this study. We quantified effects on the lifespan of queen and worker castes, the egg-laying rate of queens across queen lifespan, and the metabolic rates of whole colonies and colony members. Newly-infected queens laid more eggs than uninfected queens but had similar metabolic rates and lifespans. Surprisingly, infected workers outlived uninfected workers. At the colony level, infected colonies w..., , , ## *Wolbachia*-infected pharaoh ant colonies have higher egg production, metabolic rate, and worker survival

### Reference Information

This is the README file for the dataset associated with the paper \"*Wolbachia*-infected pharaoh ant colonies have higher egg production, metabolic rate, and worker survival\". This file uses Markdown syntax and has a .md extension

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### General details of this README

* **File name:** README(.md)
* **Author(s):** Sachin Suresh
* **Contributors(s):** Timothy A Linksvayer
* **Date created:** 01/30/2023 (mm/dd/yyyy)
* **Date modified:** 09/10/2023 (mm/dd/yyyy)

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### Dataset Version and Release History

* **Version number:** 2.0.0
* **Date:** 09/10/2023 (mm/dd/yyyy)
* **Identifier:** DOI: 10.5061/dryad.0zpc8672b

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### Dataset Attribution and Usage

* **Dataset Title:** Data for the manuscript '*Wolbachia*-infected pharaoh ant colonies have higher egg production, metabolic rate, and worker survival'
* **Dataset collection and contribution:** Rohi...