The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1852

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1855

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1862

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1865

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1856

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1854

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1858

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1857

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1864

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1851

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1860

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1861

The Annual of scientific discovery: or, Year-book of facts in science and art.

1850

Social chromosome variants differentially affect queen determination and the survival of workers in the fire ant Solenopsis invicta.

Intraspecific variation in social organization is common, yet the underlying causes are rarely known. An exception is the fire ant Solenopsis invicta in which the existence of two distinct forms of social colony organization is under the control of the two variants of a pair of social chromosomes, SB and Sb. Colonies containing exclusively SB/SB workers accept only one single queen and she must be SB/SB. By contrast, when colonies contain more than 10% of SB/Sb workers, they accept several queens but only SB/Sb queens. The variants of the social chromosome are associated with several additional important phenotypic differences, including the size, fecundity and dispersal strategies of queens, aggressiveness of workers, and sperm count in males. However, little is known about whether social chromosome variants affect fitness in other life stages. Here, we perform experiments to determine whether differential selection occurs during development and in adult workers. We find evidence that the Sb variant of the social chromosome increases the likelihood of female brood to develop into queens and that adult SB/Sb workers, the workers that cull SB/SB queens, are overrepresented in comparison to SB/SB workers. This demonstrates that supergenes such as the social chromosome can have complex effects on phenotypes at various stages of development.