The fecundity/longevitiy tradeoff in a clonal ant

假设没有一个繁殖力/寿命权衡多年生真社会性昆虫的证据主要来自比较研究的工人和蜂王的蜜蜂和一些蚂蚁物种。在这些分类群中，这两个种姓在个体发育、形态、交配状态和它们从工人那里得到的照顾方面存在巨大差异。因此，要理清各种因素对适应度参数的影响并不容易。在本项目中，我们打算调查的相互关系，在蚂蚁Platythyrea punctata，其中所有的工人在原则上能够产生雌性后代的未受精卵通过thelytokous孤雌生殖和殖民地基本上由克隆。我们将比较生殖和非生殖，遗传和形态相同的克隆人的激素滴度和转录组，年龄相同，并同样保持在各种环境和社会条件下，以阐明内分泌和基因组的途径，最终控制生育力和老化。此外，通过操纵非生殖的工作量，我们将研究“磨损”在工人老化中的作用。

Evidence for the presumed absence of a fecundity/longevity trade-off in perennial eusocial insects stems mostly from comparative studies on workers and queens of honeybees and a few ant species. In these taxa, the two castes differ enormously in ontogeny, morphology, mating status, and the care they receive from workers. It is therefore not easy to disentangle the effects of the various factors on fitness parameters. In the present project we intend to investigate the interrelations among fecundity and longevity in the ant Platythyrea punctata, in which all workers are in principle capable of producing female offspring from unfertilized eggs through thelytokous parthenogenesis and colonies essentially consist of clones. We will compare the hormone titres and transcriptomes of reproductive and non-reproductive, genetically and morphologically identical clonemates of equal age and equally kept under a variety of environmental and social conditions to shed light on the endocrine and genomic pathways that ultimately control fecundity and aging.Furthermore, by manipulation of the workload of non-reproductives we will examine the role of "wear and tear" in aging in workers.