Mating frequency and fitness in a monogynous ant

虽然雄性可以通过更多的交配来增加它们的繁殖成功率，但雌性的适合度通常更多地受到它们能产生的卵子数量的限制，而不是它们的配偶数量。然而，雌性多配偶(一夫多妻)是动物中的一种常见现象。尽管关于一夫多妻制适应价值的假设比比皆是，但检验它们往往很困难。特别是在群居昆虫中，关于交配频率和雌性健康之间关系的研究经常保持相关，因为性行为很少在实验室交配。蚂蚁心尖线虫的工作人员将年轻的蜂王从一个巢带到另一个巢，以促进与其他蚁群中在当地交配的无翼雄性蚂蚁进行重复的近亲繁殖。我们将在交配期间的不同时期中断携带女王，以获得只与一个或几个有血缘关系的雄性、少数或许多额外的无血缘雄性交配的女王。我们将允许这些交配后在实验室建立新的蜂群。我们将监测群体生长率、后代质量和抗病能力，并随后将这些特征与遗传决定的女王交配频率和近亲繁殖系数相关联。此外，通过结合野外观察、微卫星基因分型、受控交配和实验室中的实验操作，我们将明确检验以下假设：工蚁诱导的多次交配提高了蜂王的适合度。工蚁选择特定的群体输出雌性，即间性选择(雌性选择)从雌性转移到不育的工蚁。雌性的转移扩大了整个种群的雄性竞争，并增加了雄性交配后的精子竞争。我们的研究将有助于解决行为生态学中的一个基本问题，同时也将阐明心尖上蚂蚁一种迄今未被研究的奇怪行为--皇家配对--的进化意义。

While males can increase their reproductive success by additional matings, female fitness is typically more limited by the number of eggs they can produce than by the number of their mates. Nevertheless, female multiple mating (polyandry) is a common phenomenon in animals. While hypotheses on the adaptive value of polyandry abound, testing them has often been difficult. In particular in social insects, studies on the association between mating frequency and female fitness frequently remain correlative as sexuals rarely mate in the laboratory. Workers of the ant Cardiocondyla elegans carry young queens from nest to nest to promote repeated outbreeding with locally mating, wingless males in other colonies. We will interrupt queen carrying at different periods of the mating period to obtain queens that mated only with one or a few related males, a few, or many additional unrelated males. We will allow these mated queens to start new colonies in the laboratory. We will monitor colony growth rate, offspring quality, and disease resistance, and later correlate these traits with genetically determined queen mating frequencies and inbreeding coefficients. By additionally combining field observations, microsatellite genotyping, controlled mating and experimental manipulations in the lab we will explicitly test the following hypotheses:Worker-induced multiple mating increases the fitness of queens. Workers choose particular colonies for the export of female sexuals, i.e., intersexual selection (female choice) is shifted from female sexuals to sterile workers.The transfer of female sexuals widens male competition to a population-wide scale and increases post-copulatory sperm competition among males. Our study will contribute to a fundamental question in behavioral ecology and at the same time will shed light on the evolutionary meaning of a bizarre and hitherto unstudied behavior, royal matchmaking in Cardiocondyla ants.