摘要
Discrimination between nestmates and non-nestmates in social insects is thought to rely on the pattern of cuticular hydrocarbons.We investigated the cuticular hydrocarbon profiles of 2 parapatric sibling ant species,Temnothorax nylanderi(Förster,1850)and Temnothorax crassispinus(Karavaiev,1926),and their hybrid.We found that although the profiles show considerable similarities,a discriminant analysis based on the relative peak areas of cuticular hydrocarbons separates the 3 taxa.The profiles of hybrids were not consistently intermediate between those of the paternal species,suggesting either non-additive interactions among the parental biosynthetic pathways or systematic differ-ences in environment-derived odor cues.
基金
This project was carried out with permission from Al-Azhar University,Cairo and the Ministry of High Educa-tion of the Arab Republic of Egypt,and supported by funds from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
