Characterization of polymorphic microsatellites in the giant bulldog ant, Myrmecia brevinoda and the jumper ant, M. pilosula

Zeng-Qiang Qian1a*, F. Sara Ceccarelli1, 2b, Melissa E. Carew1, 3c, Helge Schlüns1d, Birgit C. Schlick-Steiner4‡e, and Florian M. Steiner4‡f

1School of Marine and Tropical Biology, and Comparative Genomics Centre, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD 4811, Australia
2Departamento de Zoología, Instituto de Biología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, C.P. 04510 México, D.F., México
3Centre for Environmental Stress & Adaptation Research, Bio21 Institute, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia
4Molecular Ecology Group, Institute of Ecology, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria

Abstract

The ant genus Myrmecia Fabricius (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) is endemic to Australia and New Caledonia, and has retained many biological traits that are considered to be basal in the family Formicidae. Here, a set of 16 dinucleotide microsatellite loci were studied that are polymorphic in at least one of the two species of the genus: the giant bulldog ant, M. brevinoda Forel, and the jumper ant, M. pilosula Smith; 13 are novel loci and 3 are loci previously published for the genus Nothomyrmecia Clark (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). In M. brevinoda, the total of 12 polymorphic microsatellites yielded a total of 125 alleles, ranging from 3 to 18 with an average of 10.42 per locus; the observed and expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.4000 to 0.9000 and from 0.5413 to 0.9200, respectively. In M. pilosula, the 9 polymorphic loci yielded a total of 67 alleles, ranging from 3 to 12 with an average of 7.44 per locus; the observed and expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.5625 to 0.9375 and from 0.4863 to 0.8711, respectively. Five loci were polymorphic in both target species. In addition, 15 out of the 16 loci were successfully amplified in M. pyriformis. These informative microsatellite loci provide a powerful tool for investigating the population and colony genetic structure of M. brevinoda and M. pilosula, and may also be applicable to a range of congeners considering the relatively distant phylogenetic relatedness between M. pilosula and the other two species within the genus Myrmecia.

Keywords: codominant markers, colony structure, Myrmecia pyriformis, Myrmeciinae, Nothomyrmecia macrops

Abbreviations: EST, expressed sequence tag; HWE, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium

Correspondence: a* zengqiang.qian@yahoo.com, b saracecca@hotmail.com, c mecarew@unimelb.edu.au, d helge.schluens@zoologie.uni-halle.de, e birgit.schlick-steiner@uibk.ac.at, f florian.m.steiner@uibk.ac.at, *Corresponding authorauthor, ‡ these authors contributed equally to the paper

Received: 22 April 2010 | Accepted: 19 July 2010 | Published: 29 May 2011

ISSN: 1536-2442 | Volume 11, Number 71

Qian Z-Q, Ceccarelli FS, Carew ME, Schlüns H, Schlick-Steiner BC, Steiner FM. 2011. Characterization of polymorphic microsatellites in the giant bulldog ant, Myrmecia brevinoda and the jumper ant, M. pilosula. Journal of Insect Science 11:71 available online: insectscience.org/11.71