10.5061/DRYAD.07NJ3
Leppänen, Jenni
University of Helsinki
Seppä, Perttu
University of Helsinki
Vepsäläinen, Kari
University of Helsinki
Savolainen, Riitta
University of Helsinki
Data from: Genetic divergence between the sympatric queen morphs of the
ant Myrmica rubra
Dryad
dataset
2015
Sympatric speciation
Social parasitism
Myrmica microrubra
Myrmica rubra
Inquilinism
Size dimorphism
2015-03-24T18:21:18Z
2015-03-24T18:21:18Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.13170
283648 bytes
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CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Pairs of obligate social parasites and their hosts, where some of the
parasites have recently diverged from their host through intraspecific
social parasitism, provide intriguing systems for studying the modes and
processes of speciation. Such speciation, probably in sympatry, has also
been propounded in the ant Myrmica rubra and its intraspecific social
parasite. In this species, parasitism is associated with queen size
dimorphism, and the small microgyne has become a social parasite of the
large macrogyne. Here, we investigated the genetic divergence of the host
and the parasite queen morphs in 11 localities in southern Finland, using
nuclear and mitochondrial markers of queens and workers. We formulated and
tested four speciation-related hypotheses that differed in the degree of
genetic divergence between the morphs. The queen morphs were genetically
distinct from each other with little hybridization. In the nuclear data,
when localities were nested within queen morphs in the hierarchical amova,
39% of the genetic variation was explained by the queen morph
(standardized F'CT = 0.63, uncorrected FCT = 0.39), whereas 18% was
explained by the locality (F'SC = 0.39, FSC = 0.29). This result
corroborated the hypothesis of advanced sympatric speciation. In contrast,
the mitochondrial DNA could not settle between the hierarchical levels of
locality and queen morph, thus substantiating equally the hypotheses of
incipient and advanced sympatric speciation. Together, our results support
the view that the microgynous parasite has genetically diverged from its
macrogynous host to the level of a nascent species.
The microsatellite genotypes and mitochondrial DNA sequencesThe file
contains tables of the microsatellite genotypes, mitochondrial DNA
sequences and their references, and information about the localities of
the samples used in this study.DRYAD_Leppanen et al_.xls
Northern Europe
Southern Finland