Genetic relatedness and colony structure in polygynousMyrmicaants

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Abstract
Genetic relatedness is a key parameter in the kin selection theory for the evolution of altruistic behaviour. In the present study relatedness was examined in three facultatively polygynous red ants, Myrmica scabrinodis and M. gallienii (both among worker and queen nestmates), and M. sabuleti (among workers). Relatedness among workers generally agreed with the expectations based on queen number being positive in all species (range: 0.12–0.55), but in most cases significantly lower than 0.75. In M. scabrinodis, relatedness among coexisting queens was high (r = 0.66) and significantly higher than among workers in the same colonies (r = 0.25), which suggests production of new sexual females by a subset of queens. In M. gallienii, coexisting queens were not related (r = 0.01), which results from the high degree of polygyny in the population studied. When data were available for workers and queens, they were used to calculate the effective number of queens (N e ) in the colonies. N e was higher in M. scabrinodis than the observed number of queens (N e = 6.5 vs x h = 2.1). This was either due to the rapid turnover of queens in Myrmica or the polydomous structure of the colonies.