Formica fusca: Queen fecundity, worker entourage, and cuticular chemistry in the ant Formica fusca

dc.contributor.affiliationUniversity of Helsinki - Sundström, Liselotte
dc.contributor.affiliationUniversity of Oulu - Helanterä, Heikki
dc.contributor.affiliationParis 13 University - d'Ettorre, Patrizia
dc.contributor.affiliation, - Ozan, Martina
dc.contributor.authorSundström, Liselotte
dc.contributor.authorHelanterä, Heikki
dc.contributor.authord'Ettorre, Patrizia
dc.contributor.authorOzan, Martina
dc.date.accessioned2025-03-24T15:18:50Z
dc.date.issued2023-07-11
dc.date.issued2023-07-11
dc.descriptionCooperative breeding entails conflicts over reproductive shares that may be settled in different ways. In ants, where several queens simultaneously reproduce in a colony, both queens and workers may influence the reproductive apportionment and offspring quality. Queens may vary in their intrinsic fecundity, which may influence the size of the worker entourage attending individual queens, and this may eventually dictate the reproductive output of a queen. We tested whether the reproductive success of queens is affected by the size of their worker entourage, their fecundity at the onset of the reproductive season, and whether the queen cuticular hydrocarbon profile carries information on fecundity. We show that in the ant Formica fusca both queen fecundity and egg hatching success increase with the size of their entourage, and that initially highly fecund queens lay larger eggs. Furthermore, higher relatedness among workers increased queen fecundity. Finally, the queens that received a large worker entourage differed in the cuticular chemistry from those that received a small worker entourage. Our results thus show that workers play a pivotal role in determining queen fitness that high intracolony relatedness among workers enhances the overall reproductive output in the colony, and that queen fecundity is reflected in their cuticular hydrocarbon profile.
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.djh9w0w4x
dc.identifier.urihttps://hydatakatalogi-test-24.it.helsinki.fi/handle/123456789/10214
dc.rightsOpen
dc.rights.licensecc-zero
dc.subjectsocial insects
dc.subjectreproductive competition
dc.subjectWorker entourage
dc.subjectreproductive skew
dc.subjectCuticular hydrocarbons
dc.titleFormica fusca: Queen fecundity, worker entourage, and cuticular chemistry in the ant Formica fusca
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