Colony-Level Differences in the Scaling Rules Governing Wood Ant Compound Eye Structure.

ABSTRACT: Differential organ growth during development is essential for adults to maintain the correct proportions and achieve their characteristic shape. Organs scale with body size, a process known as allometry that has been studied extensively in a range of organisms. Such scaling rules, typically studied from a limited sample, are assumed to apply to all members of a population and/or species. Here we study scaling in the compound eyes of workers of the wood ant, Formica rufa, from different colonies within a single population. Workers' eye area increased with body size in all the colonies showing a negative allometry. However, both the slope and intercept of some allometric scaling relationships differed significantly among colonies. Moreover, though mean facet diameter and facet number increas

SUBMITTER: Perl CD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4828647 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature