Colony life history in the turtle ant, Cephalotes goniodontus

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Arboreal ants are ecologically important in tropical forests, but there are few studies using DNA markers to examine their population and colony structure. Colonies of the arboreal turtle ant Cephalotes goniodontus create trail networks through the canopy of the tropical forest, in dense vegetation where it is difficult to determine how long a nest is used and how neighboring colonies partition space. We monitored 53 nest sites for up to six years and, using seven microsatellite markers, genotyped samples of workers collected at or near 41 nests over 1-4 years. We calculated average relatedness within samples collected at a given location, and between samples collected at the same location in successive years, and performed pedigree analysis to predict the number of queens that produced each sample of workers. Fifteen samples were highly related (r > 0.6) from single colonies, of which 11 were monogynous and the remaining four had two queens; 19 were of intermediate relatedness (0.1 > r > 0.5) with 1 to 6 queens, and 7 were groups of unrelated workers from at least 4 queens. Colonies persisted at the same nest site for 2-6 years. The smallest distance at which we found nests of different colonies was 16.2 m. The results suggets that different colonies may share foraging trails. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of using a cost-efficient genotyping method to provide novel information on colony structure and life history of ant species.

DOI	https://doi.org/10.25740/cc037jw0373
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/cc037jw0373

License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY).

Preferred citation: Butler, I., Janda, M., Butterfield, T., and Gordon, D. (2024). Colony life history in the turtle ant, Cephalotes goniodontus . Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/cc037jw0373. https://doi.org/10.25740/cc037jw0373.

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