Skip Navigation


Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on March 31, 2006
Behavioral Ecology 2006 17(4):569-574; doi:10.1093/beheco/arj067
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Lay Summary
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
17/4/569    most recent
arj067v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Search for citing articles in:
ISI Web of Science (4)
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Pearcy, M.
Right arrow Articles by Aron, S.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Pearcy, M.
Right arrow Articles by Aron, S.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Local resource competition and sex ratio in the ant Cataglyphis cursor

Morgan Pearcy and Serge Aron

Behavioural and Evolutionary Ecology, CP 160/12, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50, B-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium

Address correspondence to M. Pearcy. E-mail: mpearcy{at}ulb.ac.be.

The local resource competition (LRC) hypothesis predicts that wherever philopatric offspring compete for resources with their mothers, offspring sex ratios should be biased in favor of the dispersing sex. In ants, LRC is typically found in polygynous (multiple queen) species where foundation of new nests occurs by budding, which results in a strong population structure and a male-biased population-wide sex ratio. However, under polygyny, the effect of LRC on sex allocation is often blurred by the effect of lowered relatedness asymmetries among colony members. Moreover, environmental factors, such as the availability of resources, have also been shown to deeply influence sex ratio in ants. We investigated sex allocation in the monogynous (single queen) ant Cataglyphis cursor, a species where colonies reproduce by budding and both male and female sexuals are produced through parthenogenesis, so that between-colony variations in relatedness asymmetries should be reduced. Our results show that sex allocation in C. cursor is highly male biased both at the colony and population levels. Genetic analyses indicate a significant isolation-by-distance in the study population, consistent with limited dispersal of females. As expected from asexual reproduction, only weak variations in relatedness asymmetry of workers toward sexual offspring occur across colonies, and they are not associated with colony sex ratio. Inconsistent with the predictions of the resource availability hypothesis, the male bias significantly increases with colony size, and investment in males, but not in females, is positively correlated with total investment in sexuals. Overall, our results are consistent with the predictions of the LRC hypothesis to account for sex ratio variation in this species.

Key words: dispersal, Formicidae, relatedness, sex allocation, thelytoky.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Behav EcolHome page
J. Meunier, S. A. West, and M. Chapuisat
Split sex ratios in the social Hymenoptera: a meta-analysis
Behav. Ecol., March 1, 2008; 19(2): 382 - 390.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.