The role of breeding system on ant ecological dominance: genetic analysis of Ectatomma tuberculatum

Social insects exhibit a great variability in their social organization, and this affects colony kin structure, relatedness among nest mates, and population genetic structure. In the mosaic of arboreal ants of neotropical habitats, mutually exclusive dominant ant species occupy different territories, and their nest distribution is spatially aggregated in patches influencing patterns of population genetic structure. In this study, we performed an analysis of the population and colony genetic structure of the facultative polygynous ant Ectatomma tuberculatum to investigate how the particular breeding and social system of this species can explain its ecological dominance in the mosaic. Within-nest genetic analysis revealed that relatedness between nest mate workers was significantly greater than zero (r = 0.30) with an effective number of queens per nest of Ne = 2.5–3, indicating that polygyny is functional in this species. Moreover, we found that queen number was highly variable, probably due to queen adoption events, leading to the prevalence of polygyny over monogyny. Finally, the strong population genetic structure and the significant isolation by distance suggested that both budding and polydomy take place in this species. The respective role of secondary polygyny, budding, and polydomy are then discussed in the context of the mosaic of arboreal ants, and we propose that this particular social organization ensures the ecological dominance of E. tuberculatum by optimizing the colonization of new available nesting sites and by increasing territory size.