Linked Life Data

17964165

Source:http://linkedlifedata.com/resource/pubmed/id/17964165

Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
21
pubmed:dateCreated
2007-11-6
pubmed:databankReference
pubmed:abstractText
An ant supercolony is a very large entity with very many queens. Although normal colonies of small extent and few queens remain distinct, a supercolony is integrated harmoniously over a large area [1, 2]. The lack of aggression is advantageous: Aggression is costly, involving direct and indirect losses and recognition errors [3, 4]. Indeed, supercolonial ants are among the ecologically most successful organisms [5-7]. But how supercolonies arise remains mysterious [1, 2, 8]. Suggestions include that reduced within-colony relatedness or reduced self-nonself discrimination would foster supercolony formation [1, 2, 5, 7, 9-12]. However, one risks confusing correlation and causality in deducing the evolution from distinct colonies to supercolonies when observing established supercolonies. It might help to follow up observations of another lack of aggression, that between single-queened colonies in some ant species. We show that the single-queened Lasius austriacus lacks aggression between colonies and occasionally integrates workers across colonies but maintains high within-colony relatedness and self-nonself discrimination. Provided that the ecological framework permits, reduced aggression might prove adaptive for any ant colony irrespective of within-colony relatedness. Abandoning aggression while maintaining discrimination might be a first stage in supercolony formation. This adds to the emphasis of ecology as central to the evolution of cooperation in general [13].
pubmed:commentsCorrections
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Nov
pubmed:issn
0960-9822
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:day
6
pubmed:volume
17
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
1903-7
pubmed:dateRevised
2010-11-18
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2007
pubmed:articleTitle
Abandoning aggression but maintaining self-nonself discrimination as a first stage in ant supercolony formation.
pubmed:affiliation
School of Marine and Tropical Biology, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland 4811, Australia.
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't