Little Fire Ant hybridization?

[norris]

I heard a rumor, second hand, that a realtor in HPP said LFAs are hybridizing with another ant and becoming faster, but stingless. Anyone have any information this? Would be great if it's true!

Norris in Kapoho

[1voyager1]

It may be possible.
But, I don't think that's what's happening.

I've been conducting an LFA pogrom the last several months.
I've almost eradicated them from our property.
Now, I'm finding that a slightly larger and much faster ant is immigrating in.
They are also susceptible to the Tango bait, and are quickly disappearing.

There are several ant species in Hawai'i that are sometimes mistaken for LFAs by us types that are not well informed about how to ID them.
The Hawai'i Ant Lab has a PDF you can download from their website that has the Information on how to ID the type of ant you're looking at.

Not stinging is a plus.
But, they're also not welcome.
They, as well as the LFAs, are the subject of my eradication program.

As an after thought, give the Ant Lab a call.
Their job is knowing everything about Hawaii's ants.
They're state employees.
They work for you.
They should be able to tell you definitively if LFAs are hybridizing, or not.

[terracore]

I doubt this is true. Hybridization requires a male from another VERY similar species to mate with the queen. Granted, LFA have tens of thousands of queens so that makes it somewhat more probable, but LFA destroy other ant species, not welcome them to mate with their royalty. Not to mention, there are no known similar species in Hawaii. LFA are the only known ant species that always uses both sexual and asexual reproduction. That just about shuts down any chance of hybridization- even if 100% of the LFA males died for some reason and another male ant species moved in and was somehow able to masquerade itself as LFA, the queen would continue laying clone eggs of herself and those would hatch and kill any hybrids in the colony.

The last bit that makes the realtor theory less plausible is that they hybrid don't sting? How did they outcompete the ones that do? Sounds like they are trying to sell more houses in LFA territory. "No really, these are the GOOD LFA."

The only likelihood of the LFA supremacy changing is if something substantially more horrible than LFA come in to displace them, like the "crazy ants" that are pushing the regular fire ants out of parts of Florida and Texas. They might not sting, but they are omnivores that eat everything, including electronics.

[bananahead]

not happening.. its a fib

but Electric Ants are unique in a few ways...
"...These ants get the benefits of both asexual and sexual reproduction[8][10] - the daughters who can reproduce (the queens) have all of the mother's genes, while the sterile workers whose physical strength and disease resistance are important are produced sexually."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_ant

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save our indigenous and endemic Hawaiian Plants... learn about them, grow them, and plant them on your property, ....instead of all that invasive non-native garbage I see in most yards... aloha

[norris]

Thanks for the replies, all...your skepticism makes sense to me. Sounded too good to be true, and from a biased untrustworthy source, and contrary to my expectations of how hybridization would work.

Norris

[terracore]

Interesting, research into LFA find that males are clones of males and the queens are all clones of the queen, and only the sterile female worker ants have shared genetic material. Some of the information go so far as describing the males and queens as different species, though I think that is far fetched. (In that case, I guess the worker ants would all be considered hybrids).

Fournier proposes that because W. auropunctata males get shut out of parenting a queen, a countermeasure has evolved. During research on the species in New Caledonia, the team found that within a particular nest, genes of all males, including larval ones, matched each other and the genes in the sperm in the queens' storage organs. The males' genes, however, differed from the queens' genes at 10 of the 11 comparison points. Therefore, male genes in some eggs probably got rid of the queens' genes, says Fournier.

"Males thwart the queens by eliminating the female genome in [some] fertilized eggs," he suggests. "We could think of the males as a separate, parasitic species that uses host eggs for its own reproduction."

Genome elimination has turned up before—in some fish, amphibians, and insects—but in those cases, the females' genes wipe out the males'.

Behavioral ecologist Andrew Bourke of the Zoological Society of London describes the idea of a male ant essentially cloning itself as "plausible." If more studies confirm that the males' genes eliminate the females', the little fire ants provide "a very interesting example of sexual conflict," he says.

Yet it's not total war in the fire ant nest, points out another analyst of social insects. Both the males and queens need the sterile workers and apparently benefit from those workers' genetic diversity, which comes from sex, notes Ross Crozier of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia.

http://www.phschool.com/science/science_...lones.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v43...03705.html
http://www.littlefireants.com/Foucaud%20...202007.pdf