Population genetic evidence for sex-specific dispersal in an inbred social spider
Issue Date
2016-07Author
Smith, Deborah R.
Su, Yong-Chao
Berger-Tal, Reut
Lubin, Yael
Publisher
Wiley
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Rights
© 2016 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use,distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Show full item recordAbstract
Dispersal in most group-living species ensures gene flow among groups, but in cooperative social spiders, juvenile dispersal is suppressed and colonies are highly inbred. It has been suggested that such inbred sociality is advantageous in the short term, but likely to lead to extinction or reduced speciation rates in the long run. In this situation, very low levels of dispersal and gene flow among colonies may have unusually important impacts on fitness and persistence of social spiders. We investigated sex-specific differences in dispersal and gene flow among colonies, as reflected in the genetic structure within colonies and populations of the African social spider Stegodyphus dumicola Pocock, 1898 (Eresidae). We used DNA fingerprinting and mtDNA sequence data along with spatial mapping of colonies to compare male and female patterns of relatedness within and among colonies at three study sites. Samples were collected during and shortly after the mating season to detect sex-specific dispersal. Distribution of mtDNA haplotypes was consistent with proliferation of social nests by budding and medium- to long-distance dispersal by ballooning females. Analysis of molecular variance and spatial autocorrelation analyses of AFLPs showed high levels of genetic similarity within colonies, and STRUCTURE analyses revealed that the number of source populations contributing to colonies ranged from one to three. We also showed significant evidence of male dispersal among colonies at one site. These results support the hypothesis that in social spiders, genetic cohesion among populations is maintained by long-distance dispersal of female colony founders. Genetic diversity within colonies is maintained by colony initiation by multiple dispersing females, and adult male dispersal over short distances. Male dispersal may be particularly important in maintaining gene flow among colonies in local populations.
Description
A grant from the One-University Open Access Fund at the University of Kansas was used to defray the author's publication fees in this Open Access journal. The Open Access Fund, administered by librarians from the KU, KU Law, and KUMC libraries, is made possible by contributions from the offices of KU Provost, KU Vice Chancellor for Research & Graduate Studies, and KUMC Vice Chancellor for Research. For more information about the Open Access Fund, please see http://library.kumc.edu/authors-fund.xml.
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Citation
Smith, D. R., Su, Y.-C., Berger-Tal, R. and Lubin, Y. (2016), Population genetic evidence for sex-specific dispersal in an inbred social spider. Ecol Evol, 6: 5479–5490. doi:10.1002/ece3.2200
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as: © 2016 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use,distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.