iBet uBet web content aggregator. Adding the entire web to your favor.
iBet uBet web content aggregator. Adding the entire web to your favor.



Link to original content: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19328589
Unicolonial ants: where do they come from, what are they and where are they going? - PubMed Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2009 Jun;24(6):341-9.
doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2009.01.013. Epub 2009 Mar 26.

Unicolonial ants: where do they come from, what are they and where are they going?

Heikki Helanterä  1 , Joan E Strassmann, Juli Carrillo, David C Queller
Affiliations
Review

Unicolonial ants: where do they come from, what are they and where are they going?

Heikki Helanterä et al. Trends Ecol Evol. 2009 Jun.

Abstract

Unicolonial ant populations are the most extensive cooperative units known in nature, forming networks of interconnected nests extending sometimes hundreds of kilometers. Within such a supercolony, worker altruistic behavior might be maladaptive, because it seems to aid random members of the population instead of relatives. However, recent genetic and behavioral data show that, viewed on a sufficiently large scale, unicolonial ants do have colony boundaries that define very large kin groups. It seems likely that they are family groups that continue to express their kin-selected behavior as they grow to extreme sizes. However, at extreme sizes, kin selection theory predicts that these behaviors are maladapted and evolutionarily unstable, a prediction that is supported by their twiggy phylogenetic distribution.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources