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Fundamental difference in life history traits of two species of Cataglyphis ants

BACKGROUND: The two sympatric species of Tunisian desert ants, Cataglyphis bicolor and C. mauritanica, do not exhibit any differences in their foraging ecology, e.g. in food preferences and in their spatial and temporal activity patterns. Here we show that instead the two species markedly differ in...

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Autores principales: Knaden, Markus, Wehner, Rüdiger
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2006
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1716760/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17173691
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-3-21
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author Knaden, Markus
Wehner, Rüdiger
author_facet Knaden, Markus
Wehner, Rüdiger
author_sort Knaden, Markus
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The two sympatric species of Tunisian desert ants, Cataglyphis bicolor and C. mauritanica, do not exhibit any differences in their foraging ecology, e.g. in food preferences and in their spatial and temporal activity patterns. Here we show that instead the two species markedly differ in their life histories. RESULTS: We analysed mtDNA of specimens that were collected along a 250-km transect. C. bicolor exhibited a genetically unstructured population (with the genetic and geographic distances among colonies not being correlated). On the contrary the populations of the polygynous C. mauritanica were clearly structured, i.e. exhibited a strong correlation between genetic and geographic distances. This difference is in accordance with large queen dispersal distances due to far-reaching mating flights in C. bicolor and small queen dispersal distances due to colony foundation by budding in C. mauritanica. Furthermore, wherever we found populations of both species to coexist within the same habitat, the habitat was used agriculturally. Mapping nest positions over periods of several years showed that plowing dramatically decreased the nest densities of either species. CONCLUSION: We conclude that owing to its greater queen dispersal potential C. bicolor might be more successful in quickly re-colonizing disturbed areas, while the slowly dispersing C. mauritanica could later out-compete C. bicolor by adopting its effective nest-budding strategy. According to this scenario the observed sympatry of the two species might be an intermediate stage in which faster colonization by one species and more powerful exploitation of space by the other species have somehow balanced each other out. In conclusion, C. bicolor and C. mauritanica represent an example where environmental disturbances in combination with different life histories might beget sympatry in congeneric species with overlapping niches.
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spelling pubmed-17167602006-12-23 Fundamental difference in life history traits of two species of Cataglyphis ants Knaden, Markus Wehner, Rüdiger Front Zool Research BACKGROUND: The two sympatric species of Tunisian desert ants, Cataglyphis bicolor and C. mauritanica, do not exhibit any differences in their foraging ecology, e.g. in food preferences and in their spatial and temporal activity patterns. Here we show that instead the two species markedly differ in their life histories. RESULTS: We analysed mtDNA of specimens that were collected along a 250-km transect. C. bicolor exhibited a genetically unstructured population (with the genetic and geographic distances among colonies not being correlated). On the contrary the populations of the polygynous C. mauritanica were clearly structured, i.e. exhibited a strong correlation between genetic and geographic distances. This difference is in accordance with large queen dispersal distances due to far-reaching mating flights in C. bicolor and small queen dispersal distances due to colony foundation by budding in C. mauritanica. Furthermore, wherever we found populations of both species to coexist within the same habitat, the habitat was used agriculturally. Mapping nest positions over periods of several years showed that plowing dramatically decreased the nest densities of either species. CONCLUSION: We conclude that owing to its greater queen dispersal potential C. bicolor might be more successful in quickly re-colonizing disturbed areas, while the slowly dispersing C. mauritanica could later out-compete C. bicolor by adopting its effective nest-budding strategy. According to this scenario the observed sympatry of the two species might be an intermediate stage in which faster colonization by one species and more powerful exploitation of space by the other species have somehow balanced each other out. In conclusion, C. bicolor and C. mauritanica represent an example where environmental disturbances in combination with different life histories might beget sympatry in congeneric species with overlapping niches. BioMed Central 2006-12-15 /pmc/articles/PMC1716760/ /pubmed/17173691 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-3-21 Text en Copyright © 2006 Knaden and Wehner; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Knaden, Markus
Wehner, Rüdiger
Fundamental difference in life history traits of two species of Cataglyphis ants
title Fundamental difference in life history traits of two species of Cataglyphis ants
title_full Fundamental difference in life history traits of two species of Cataglyphis ants
title_fullStr Fundamental difference in life history traits of two species of Cataglyphis ants
title_full_unstemmed Fundamental difference in life history traits of two species of Cataglyphis ants
title_short Fundamental difference in life history traits of two species of Cataglyphis ants
title_sort fundamental difference in life history traits of two species of cataglyphis ants
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1716760/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17173691
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1742-9994-3-21
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