Abstract
Identifying the native range of invasive species is useful to understand their evolution and natural history, as well as to develop new methods to control potentially harmful introduced organisms. The clonal raider ant, Ooceraea biroi, is an introduced species and an increasingly important social insect model organism, but its native range remains unknown. Here, we report a new series of O. biroi collections from Bangladesh, Singapore, Vietnam and China. We use a molecular phylogeny constructed with five gene fragments from 27 samples to determine that invasive lineages of O. biroi originated in Bangladesh. These lineages may have spread from Bangladesh via the historically significant Bay of Bengal shipping ports. Ooceraea biroi shares multiple features of its biology with other introduced ants, including parthenogenesis, retention of heterozygosity and presence of multiple egg-layers in the colony. Using laboratory rearing and microsatellite markers, we show that colonies collected from disturbed habitat in Bangladesh have these traits in common with colonies from the invasive range. Ancestral populations with sexual reproduction in primary habitats either remain to be discovered or have gone extinct. Our findings advance our understanding of the global spread of the clonal raider ant and highlight a suite of general traits that make certain ants prone to becoming invasive.
Highlights
A number of tramp ant species have been spread by human commerce throughout the world
Invasive genotypes will be phylogenetically nested within the diversity of native genotypes and will be more closely related to native genotypes from their source population than from geographically more distant native populations
Our results provide a number of new insights into the biology and invasion history of the clonal raider ant
Summary
A number of tramp ant species have been spread by human commerce throughout the world. Studies of their native populations allow researchers to better understand the circumstances under which these species have evolved, identify general characteristics that predispose them to become invasive and uncover natural biological control agents that could limit their spread. The exact native range and likely route of invasion remain unknown for the great majority of invasive species [1]. Genetic data have identified the source populations and likely invasion routes for a handful of invasive ants [2,3,4,5]. Challenges arise when the global distribution of a species is poorly known, when species are difficult to collect and when putatively native populations are difficult to pinpoint or reside in inaccessible regions of the planet
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