Mycocepurus smithii

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i5K Comments for Mycocepurus smithii
Mycocepurus smithii is one of the most unusual fungus-growing ant, because it the only know attine species in which queens are capable of asexual reproduction whereas workers are sterile. The wide geographic distribution, ranging form Mexico to Argentina and including some Caribbean islands, in combination with high nest densities within populations, suggest that M. smithii is an ecologically successful species, contradicting the expectation that asexual species should be evolutionarily short-lived. This seeming conundrum was recently explored in a study by Rabeling and co-workers demonstrating that sexual populations exist in the Amazon basin, generating asexual clones. But M. smithii is not only interesting because of it’s fascinating reproductive biology. In addition, the genus Mycocepurus represents one of the most basally diverging branches in the attine phylogeny. Comparisons of the genomes of M. smithii and more highly derived fungus-growing ants, such as the leafcutter ants, will provide important insights into the evolution of complex social traits, and will help to understand the genetic mechanisms underlying derived social characteristics such as multiple mating and worker polymorphism.a Ted Schultz

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Mycocepurus smithii
Taxonomic classification
Class: Insecta
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Formicidae
Genus: Mycocepurus
NCBI taxid: 485px-US-NLM-NCBI-Logo.png 34712
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Nomination: i5K initiative


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