When males inseminate the queen, their sperm are delivered in a seminal fluid that is packed with proteins, some of which are known to damage rival sperm. In birds and mammals, sexual conflicts manifest as a set of behaviors or appearances, but in leafcutter ants the war is waged out of sight, within the queen’s sperm storage organ. Such male-female rivalry, called sexual conflict, occurs when two sexes have competing interests concerning reproduction. If she runs out she will lose her fertility and the whole colony will be doomed.” “The queen will use the sperm she’s collected in her sperm storage organ for the rest of her life. “After the nuptial flight, the males die and the queens shed their wings, burrow into the ground and start their colony,” Baer said. But queens have a different agenda: they must return from their nuptial flight with enough healthy sperm to supply their entire reproductive future, which may span 20-30 years and result in mega societies of several million worker ants. Intent on producing offspring, males compete during this period by delivering sperm to queens in a fluid laced with ingredients that are harmful to competitors’ sperm.
This happens just once in a queen’s lifetime when a winged virgin female hatches and takes to the sky for an intense mating period called the nuptial flight. Leafcutter ants are unusual in the realm of social insects because their queens are polyandrous, meaning they mate with more than one male. A study describing the research was published online in Molecular & Cellular Proteomics. Competing males deliver sperm in a fluid that’s toxic to rivals’ sperm, while females quash their efforts in order to ensure their own reproductive success.įor the first time, a team of researchers led by Boris Baer, a professor of entomology at UC Riverside, has begun to untangle the molecular mechanism underlying this biological battle.
It’s hidden from sight, but there’s an epic battle of the sexes raging in the leafcutter ant species Atta colombica.
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