Male ants disguised by the queen's bouquet

Sylvia Cremer (), Matthew F. Sledge and Jürgen Heinze
Additional contact information
Sylvia Cremer: Biology 1, University of Regensburg
Matthew F. Sledge: University of Florence
Jürgen Heinze: Biology 1, University of Regensburg

Nature, 2002, vol. 419, issue 6910, 897-897

Abstract: Abstract Males of the tropical ant Cardiocondyla obscurior are either wingless and aggressive or winged and docile, and both compete for access to virgin queens in the nest1,2. Although the fighter males (ergatoids) attack and kill other ergatoids, they tolerate and even attempt to mate with their winged rivals. Here we show that the winged males avoid the aggression of wingless males by mimicking the chemical bouquet of virgin queens, but that their mating success is not reduced as a result. This example of female mimicry by vigorous males is surprising, as in other species it is typically used as a protective strategy by weaker males, and may explain the coexistence and equal mating success of two male morphs.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/419897a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:419:y:2002:i:6910:d:10.1038_419897a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/419897a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().