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Intergenerational effect of juvenile hormone on offspring in Pogonomyrmex harvester ants

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Abstract

Parents can influence the phenotypes of their offspring via a number of mechanisms. In harvester ants, whether female progeny develop into workers or daughter queens is strongly influenced by the age and temperature conditions experienced by their mother, which is associated with variation in maternal ecdysteroid deposition in fertilized eggs. In many insects, juvenile hormone (JH) is antagonistic to ecdysteroid release, suggesting that seasonal and age-based variation in maternal JH titers may explain maternal effects on offspring size and reproductive caste. To test this hypothesis, we artificially increased maternal JH titers with methoprene, a JH analog, in laboratory colonies of two Pogonomyrmex populations exhibiting genetic caste determination. Increasing maternal JH resulted in a 50% increase in worker body size, as well as a sharp reduction in total number of progeny reared, but did not alter the genotype of progeny reared to adulthood. The intergenerational effect of JH manipulation was not mediated by a reduction in ecdysteroid deposition into eggs; instead, changes in egg size, trophic egg availability or brood/worker ratio may have altered the nutritional environment of developing larvae. Egg ecdysteroid content was significantly negatively correlated with natural variation in worker body size, however, suggesting that there are multiple independent routes by which queens can modify offspring phenotypes.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the help of Todd Clason for providing access and training in microscopy techniques, and Matthew Rand for sharing techniques to distinguish trophic eggs. This work was funded by research grants awarded to C.J. Graves from the Beta Beta Beta National Biology Honors Society and from the HELiX (Hughes Endeavor for Life Science Excellence) program at the University of Vermont.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, 05405, USA

    Sara Helms Cahan & Christopher J. Graves

  2. US Department of Agriculture, Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center, Maricopa, AZ, 85138, USA

    Colin S. Brent

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  1. Sara Helms Cahan
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  2. Christopher J. Graves
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  3. Colin S. Brent
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Correspondence to Sara Helms Cahan.

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Communicated by I.D. Hume.

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Cahan, S.H., Graves, C.J. & Brent, C.S. Intergenerational effect of juvenile hormone on offspring in Pogonomyrmex harvester ants. J Comp Physiol B 181, 991–999 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00360-011-0587-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00360-011-0587-x

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