Registered users receive a variety of benefits including the ability to customize email alerts, create favorite journals list, and save searches.
Please note that a BioOne web account does not automatically grant access to full-text content. An institutional or society member subscription is required to view non-Open Access content.
Contact helpdesk@bioone.org with any questions.
The colony is the functional unit of natural selection for most social insects including the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius. To address reproduction in the species variables were evaluated relevant to the colony-level (sociometry), and social growth (sociogenesis). Colonies become reproductively mature when the worker population reaches ~700 individuals. The production of males and gynes (reproductive females) occurs only in spring, and is highly synchronized from its onset, which in turn allows synchronization of mating in early summer. Worker production follows sexual production, and continues until colonies go dormant in winter. Once mature, colony investment into reproduction is a constant proportion of colony size (isometric), regardless of the sex ratio produced. As individual male body size increases, they become leaner, whereas the amount of fat stored by gynes is highly variable. Larger colonies produce larger males, but gyne size is a constant across the range of colony sizes. As colony size increases, investment into males increases faster than investment into gynes. Therefore, there is a trend of increasing male bias in the sex ratio with increasing colony size (although a single outlier complicates this conclusion). We interpret our results in the light of sexual and natural selection as documented in related species. We also report the first documentation of male production by workers in the genus Pogonomyrmex.
This article is only available to subscribers. It is not available for individual sale.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have
purchased or subscribe to this BioOne eBook Collection. You are receiving
this notice because your organization may not have this eBook access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users-please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
Additional information about institution subscriptions can be foundhere