Summary
Females ofTechnomyrmex albipes consist of winged queens, intercastes and workers. In established colonies, reproduction is performed by many intercastes (wingless females which have intermediate phenotypes between queen and worker characters). Dissection and morphological examination revealed that intercastes had a spermatheca, but workers did not. Intercastes can be divided into three classes: major intercastes with three ocelli, medium intercastes with one ocellus, and minor intercases without ocelli. Workers have no ocelli. The thoracic structure of intercastes gradually becomes more complex from minors to majors. The body size of intercastes gradually increases from minors to majors, and so does the number of overioles. The body size distributions of minor intercastes and workers overlap considerably, but the distributions of ovariole numbers overlap less. Winged queens had distinctly larger body sizes, more ovarioles and larger spermathecae than intercastes. Most intercastes were inseminated with developed ovaries and appeared to reproduce. The caste system and reproductive division of labour inT. albipes is compared to those of ant species in which permanently wingless females reproduce.
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Tsuji, K., Furukawa, T., Kinomura, K. et al. The caste system of the dolichoderine antTechnomyrmex albipes (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): morphological description of queens, workers and reproductively active intercastes. Ins. Soc 38, 413–422 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01241875
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01241875