Male Biology in the Queenless Ponerine Ant Ophthalmopone Berthoudi (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Various ponerine ants exhibit significant modifications in their pattern of male dispersal, and this is associated with changes in the queenright social structure. In some species the queen caste has become permanently wingless (= ergatoid queens), and in others it has been replaced by mated laying workers (= gamergates; Peeters and Crewe, 1984). Thus, male nuptial flights take on new characteristics since they have to locate flightless sexual partners. Data on male behavior are only available for a few of the ponerine species without a queen caste, but generally males disperse individually and orientate to foreign nests, around which mating then occurs. Brown (1953) observed low-flying males entering nests in two species of Rhytidoponera. Mating can occur outside the nest entrances (e.g. i n R. chaiybaea; Ward, 1981), or inside the nest (e.g. in Diacamma rugosum; Wheeler and Chapman, 1922). Ophthalmopone berthoudi Fore1 is permanently queenless, and details of its reproductive system and polydomous organization appear elsewhere (Peeters and Crewe, 1985, MS). This paper deals with the pattern of male behavior in the field and the characteristics of male production in a breeding system made up exclusively of laying workers.