On 15/10/2011 3:11 PM, randy oliver wrote:

> >  Colonies founded by single-inseminated queens have very low survival, so it
> would be in the interest of the drone to ensure that alleles from other
> drones function to promote the survival of his offspring, of which (if the
> >  queen mates with 20 drones), 1/20th of the virgins would be his daughters.

  Ants, all ants as far as I know, have not found the need to do this.  
Of course they do have physicaly different castes.

The trouble is this does not seem very good odds. If it is typical to 
have say around twenty swarm cells, I assume (on no evidence) that this 
will not represent one for each drone the queen mated with.  So he may 
not be represented at all.  Then of course if it is typical for only one 
virgin  to mate and head the parent hive then the chances are that he is 
well out of the race.  Even if the hive decides to send out after swarms 
this number still leaves him unlikely to make the cut.

It seems to me that the only selective advantage is to the queen.  
Queens that have mated multiple times will head more successful hives 
and therefore potentialy have more daughters and sons.

Interestingly for an insect, the queen will only have a few daughters.  
She will have many more sons, but not all that many.  Still they may be 
negatively important, ie. poorly performing hives will not produce 
(many?) drones.

Geoff Manning

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