Open AccessLinked supergenes underlie split sex ratio and social organization in an ant
Author(s) -
German Lagunas-Robles,
Jessica Purcell,
Alan Brelsford
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2101427118
Subject(s) - trait , biology , sex ratio , offspring , ant , perspective (graphical) , evolutionary biology , sex allocation , genetics , ecology , demography , computer science , artificial intelligence , sociology , pregnancy , population , programming language
Significance Some social insects exhibit split sex ratios, wherein a subset of colonies produce future queens and others produce males. This phenomenon spawned many influential theoretical studies and empirical tests, both of which have advanced our understanding of parent–offspring conflicts and the maintenance of cooperative breeding. However, previous studies assumed that split sex ratio was not under genetic control. Here, we show that split sex ratio is associated with a large genomic region in two ant species. The discovery that sex allocation can have a genetic basis provides an additional perspective on this well-studied trait of social insects.