Multiple mating of queens: > Obligate multiple mating by queens has evolved repeatedly in bees, wasps, and ants. Although facultative multiple mating commonly occurs across taxa, high levels of polyandry have been reported only in a few species with strictly single-queen societies. In ants, queen mating frequency is usually lower than 2, but high polyandry levels have evolved in the leaf cutter ants Acromyrmex and Atta, the harvester ants Pogonomyrmex, and the army ants of the genera Aenictus, Dorylus, Eciton, and Neivamyrmex. The polygyny versus polyandry hypothesis (Keller & Reeve, 1994) predicts that multiple mating should be less common or lost when genetic diversity among workers is achieved through multiple queens per colony. Despite considerable empirical efforts, our understanding of the evolution of polyandry in the face of the costs of mating in social insects remains limited. Multiple mating and supercoloniality in Cataglyphis desert ants LAURIANNE LENIAUD, et al Biological Journal of the Linnean Society Article first published online: 10 OCT 2011 *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm