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Thelytokous Parthenogenesis in the Fungus-Gardening Ant Mycocepurus smithii (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
The general prevalence of sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction among organisms testifies to the evolutionary benefits of recombination, such as accelerated adaptation to changing environments and elimination of deleterious mutations. Documented instances of asexual reproduction in groups ot...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2009
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728836/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19707513 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006781 |
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author | Rabeling, Christian Lino-Neto, José Cappellari, Simone C. Dos-Santos, Iracenir A. Mueller, Ulrich G. Bacci, Maurício |
author_facet | Rabeling, Christian Lino-Neto, José Cappellari, Simone C. Dos-Santos, Iracenir A. Mueller, Ulrich G. Bacci, Maurício |
author_sort | Rabeling, Christian |
collection | PubMed |
description | The general prevalence of sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction among organisms testifies to the evolutionary benefits of recombination, such as accelerated adaptation to changing environments and elimination of deleterious mutations. Documented instances of asexual reproduction in groups otherwise dominated by sexual reproduction challenge evolutionary biologists to understand the special circumstances that might confer an advantage to asexual reproductive strategies. Here we report one such instance of asexual reproduction in the ants. We present evidence for obligate thelytoky in the asexual fungus-gardening ant, Mycocepurus smithii, in which queens produce female offspring from unfertilized eggs, workers are sterile, and males appear to be completely absent. Obligate thelytoky is implicated by reproductive physiology of queens, lack of males, absence of mating behavior, and natural history observations. An obligate thelytoky hypothesis is further supported by the absence of evidence indicating sexual reproduction or genetic recombination across the species' extensive distribution range (Mexico-Argentina). Potential conflicting evidence for sexual reproduction in this species derives from three Mycocepurus males reported in the literature, previously regarded as possible males of M. smithii. However, we show here that these specimens represent males of the congeneric species M. obsoletus, and not males of M. smithii. Mycocepurus smithii is unique among ants and among eusocial Hymenoptera, in that males seem to be completely absent and only queens (and not workers) produce diploid offspring via thelytoky. Because colonies consisting only of females can be propagated consecutively in the laboratory, M. smithii could be an adequate study organism a) to test hypotheses of the population-genetic advantages and disadvantages of asexual reproduction in a social organism and b) inform kin conflict theory. For a Portuguese translation of the abstract, please see Abstract S1. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2728836 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2009 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-27288362009-08-26 Thelytokous Parthenogenesis in the Fungus-Gardening Ant Mycocepurus smithii (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Rabeling, Christian Lino-Neto, José Cappellari, Simone C. Dos-Santos, Iracenir A. Mueller, Ulrich G. Bacci, Maurício PLoS One Research Article The general prevalence of sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction among organisms testifies to the evolutionary benefits of recombination, such as accelerated adaptation to changing environments and elimination of deleterious mutations. Documented instances of asexual reproduction in groups otherwise dominated by sexual reproduction challenge evolutionary biologists to understand the special circumstances that might confer an advantage to asexual reproductive strategies. Here we report one such instance of asexual reproduction in the ants. We present evidence for obligate thelytoky in the asexual fungus-gardening ant, Mycocepurus smithii, in which queens produce female offspring from unfertilized eggs, workers are sterile, and males appear to be completely absent. Obligate thelytoky is implicated by reproductive physiology of queens, lack of males, absence of mating behavior, and natural history observations. An obligate thelytoky hypothesis is further supported by the absence of evidence indicating sexual reproduction or genetic recombination across the species' extensive distribution range (Mexico-Argentina). Potential conflicting evidence for sexual reproduction in this species derives from three Mycocepurus males reported in the literature, previously regarded as possible males of M. smithii. However, we show here that these specimens represent males of the congeneric species M. obsoletus, and not males of M. smithii. Mycocepurus smithii is unique among ants and among eusocial Hymenoptera, in that males seem to be completely absent and only queens (and not workers) produce diploid offspring via thelytoky. Because colonies consisting only of females can be propagated consecutively in the laboratory, M. smithii could be an adequate study organism a) to test hypotheses of the population-genetic advantages and disadvantages of asexual reproduction in a social organism and b) inform kin conflict theory. For a Portuguese translation of the abstract, please see Abstract S1. Public Library of Science 2009-08-26 /pmc/articles/PMC2728836/ /pubmed/19707513 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006781 Text en Rabeling et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Rabeling, Christian Lino-Neto, José Cappellari, Simone C. Dos-Santos, Iracenir A. Mueller, Ulrich G. Bacci, Maurício Thelytokous Parthenogenesis in the Fungus-Gardening Ant Mycocepurus smithii (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) |
title | Thelytokous Parthenogenesis in the Fungus-Gardening Ant Mycocepurus smithii (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) |
title_full | Thelytokous Parthenogenesis in the Fungus-Gardening Ant Mycocepurus smithii (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) |
title_fullStr | Thelytokous Parthenogenesis in the Fungus-Gardening Ant Mycocepurus smithii (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) |
title_full_unstemmed | Thelytokous Parthenogenesis in the Fungus-Gardening Ant Mycocepurus smithii (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) |
title_short | Thelytokous Parthenogenesis in the Fungus-Gardening Ant Mycocepurus smithii (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) |
title_sort | thelytokous parthenogenesis in the fungus-gardening ant mycocepurus smithii (hymenoptera: formicidae) |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2728836/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19707513 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0006781 |
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