Queen mating frequency and relatedness in young Atta sexdens colonies

Queen mating frequency is correlated with mature colony size across monogyn ous ant species as a whole. However, recent comparisons between Atta and Ac romyrmex leafcutter ants found an opposite trend. We tested whether this re sult could be reproduced for Atta sexdens, using a new. Atta colombica micr osatellite marker to analyse queens and worker offspring from six young col onies. We found that all queens had mated multiply and used sperm from at l east 2-3 males. This result is comparable to previous findings for. Atta co lombica and seems to confirm that queen mating frequency in Atta is lower t han in Acromyrmex.