Abstract
Intraspecific variability in social organization is common, yet the underlying causes are rarely known. I will show that the existence of two divergent forms of social organization in six ant species is under the control of a pair of heteromorphic chromosomes that have many of the key properties of sex chromosomes. In particular, this social chromosome contains a large (13 megabases) region in which recombination is completely suppressed via three large inversions ( Fig. 1 ). These findings highlight how genomic rearrangements can maintain divergent adaptive social phenotypes involving many genes acting together by locally limiting recombination.
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