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Post by Wood~Ant on Jun 18, 2015 10:33:59 GMT
Although the males of Myrmica are not much smaller than the winged queens, they are slimmer and have straight antennae as opposed to the females (workers and queens) which have an "elbow" type jointed middle to their antennae.
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Post by deansyme on Jun 18, 2015 15:04:02 GMT
I posted a study into the genetics of the fire ant, which only passes the queens genes to young queens and the male she originally mated with genes to young princes. This way they can mate in the nest or with each other in flights without interbreeding. It is a truly remarkable example of how ants can selectively control what genes get passed on to avoid interbreeding in closely related nests or multi-queen colonies.
Now given that the myrmica are close cousins with the fire ants, it is possible that it could also be true with them as no similar study has been done.
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Post by Zarbi on Jun 18, 2015 17:34:12 GMT
That's interesting, as I know that Myrmica down in the south of England often seem to mate on blades of grass before they fly, so perhaps some of the new queens return to the parent nest or are dragged back by related workers?
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Post by Wood~Ant on Jun 18, 2015 18:00:41 GMT
This photo shows a male and female Myrmica ruginodis copulating. As you can see they are not flying, but actually mating on the surface of a leaf.  |
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