Scientists find new colony structure of fire ants evolved in one species before spreading to others QMUL NatureComms
Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have discovered that a new form of ant society spread across species. They found that after the new form of society evolved in one species, a"social supergene" carrying the instruction-set for the new social form spread into other species. This spread occurred through hybridization, i.e., breeding between ants of different species.
Red fire ants originally had only colonies with one queen. The team previously discovered that about one million years ago, a new social form evolved where colonies could have dozens of queens. A particular version of a large section of chromosome, named the"social supergene", includes theNature Communications
, analyzed the entire genomes or instruction sets of 365 male fire ants to examine the evolution of the social supergene, and found that the same version of this chromosome is present in multiple fire antTransfer of large amounts of genetic information across species is rare because of genetic incompatibilities.
Dr. Yannick Wurm, Reader in Evolutionary Genomics and Bioinformatics at Queen Mary University of London and a fellow of The Alan Turing Institute said:"This research reveals how evolutionary innovations can spread across species. It also shows how evolution works at the level of DNA and chromosomes. "It was incredibly surprising to discover that other species could acquire a new form of social organization through hybridization. The supergene region that creates multi-queen colonies is a large piece of chromosome that contains hundreds of genes. The many parts of a genome evolve to work together in fine-tuned manners, thus suddenly having a mix with different versions of many genes from another species is complicated and quite rare.
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