Super colony

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Super colonies arise in ants (Formicidae) from the amalgamation of individual colonies of the same species with a clear family demarcation. Normally, foreign ant colonies fight each other in order not to make the investments in survival and offspring of one's own colony accessible to foreign colonies. To a certain extent, it seems worthwhile to accept the costs of aggressive behavior. These costs result, among other things, from the loss of workers in fights between non-colony individuals. In some cases, individuals belonging to the colony are also recognized as foreigners and killed. The high investment requirement in aggression is probably the decisive factor that leads to the merging of ant colonies, because a loss of aggression can be associated with a gain in fitness compared to other species.

In the super colony, the genetic peculiarities of the originally foreign colonies are lost - which is normally attempted to prevent. How and when exactly an ant colony “switches” from aggressive to peaceful is a focus of studies on eusocial Hymenoptera . The questions have not yet been finally clarified. The anthropogenic spread of species that can form supercolonies is problematic . These can very quickly develop into ecological plagues in the new settlement area. Research into the environmental conditions under which the ants switch from aggressive to peaceful could be the decisive step in combating them.

There is at least one species - Lasius austriacus in Lower Austria  - which does not show aggressive behavior within its own species and can therefore live mixed with other colonies of the same species, but still maintains high kinship differences within the colonies. By definition, this species does not form super-colonies, but it is of outstanding importance for research into loss of aggression.

See also

literature

  • Florian M. Steiner, Birgit C. Schlick-Steiner, Karl Moder, Christian Stauffer, Wolfgang Arthofer, Alfred Buschinger, Xavier Espadaler, Erhard Christian, Katrin Einfinger, Eberhard Lorbeer, Christa Schafellner, Manfred Ayasse, Ross H. Crozier: Abandoning aggression while maintaining self-nonself discrimination as a first stage in ant supercolongy formation. In: Current biology: CB. Volume 17, Number 21, November 2007, pp. 1903-1907, doi : 10.1016 / j.cub.2007.09.061 , PMID 17964165 . PDF (Engl.)
  • Tatiana Giraud, Jes S. Pedersen, Laurent Keller: Evolution of supercolonies: The Argentine ants of southern Europe. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 99 (9), pp. 6075-6079, 2002, PMC 122904 (free full text)