Molecular-genetic analyses of dispersal and breeding behaviour in the Australian termite Coptotermes lacteus: evidence for non-random mating in a swarm-dispersal mating system
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We used microsatellite DNA markers to infer the dispersal and breeding behaviour of Coptotermes lacteus, a termite whose large mounds are a conspicuous feature of Australia’s central east coast. We genotyped a subsample of neuter offspring for each of 38 colonies sampled over two spatially separated populations, one in a natural forest and the other in an exotic radiata pine plantation. All colonies showed offspring genotype frequencies consistent with a single reproductive pair. This result confirms that stable monogamy is the normal breeding arrangement for this species and that multi-reproductive colonies are rare. The two study populations were significantly differentiated and the distance separating them (~150 km) is therefore an effective constraint on gene flow. The populations themselves, however, were not noticeably subdivided above the level of colony. This lack of within-population viscosity is unexpected for weakly dispersing species and suggests that local gamete dispersal is in fact quite effective in C. lacteus. Nonetheless, dispersing sexuals do not appear to mate randomly. Instead, all four microsatellite loci are deficient in heterozygotes, indicating that populations are substantially inbred, irrespective of habitat. Evidence from hierarchical F-statistics, spatial genetic autocorrelation and relatedness calculations suggests that deviations from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium may result from either a preference for non-sibling relatives over totally unrelated mates, or from random mating with viscosity – though evidence for the latter hypothesis was not detected. These findings suggest that swarm-dispersal mating systems, usually considered to produce outbreeding and panmixia, can instead involve a notable degree of non-random mating.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".