The evolution of eusociality has led to considerable changes in the general hymenopteran body plan. In particular, the evolution of reproductive division of labour caused the worker caste to be largely freed from the demands involved in reproduction. As a consequence, workers were able to evolve highly specialized morphologies for foraging and colony maintenance, whereas the reproductive caste became specialized for reproduction. Despite these important changes, little is known about the general patterns of morphological evolution within the ant reproductive caste. Our goals here were to characterize morphological variation in the ant reproductive caste and to test whether different sexes display variation in their evolutionary rates. We obtained measurements of 897 specimens from a total of 678 ant species. The shapes of the size distributions were similar between sexes, with queens being larger than males in all traits except for eye length. Contrary to the expectation based on Rensch’s rule, although queens were larger, the degree of dimorphism increased with body size. Finally, there was strong evidence for an accelerated tempo of morphological evolution in queens in relation to males. These results represent the first comprehensive treatment of morphological variation in the ant reproductive caste and provide important new insights into their evolution.

中文翻译：

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蚂蚁生殖种姓的形态演变

礼节性的发展已导致整个膜翅虫身体计划的重大变化。特别是，生殖劳动分工的演变导致工人种姓在很大程度上摆脱了涉及生殖的需求。结果，工人能够进化出高度专业化的形态来进行觅食和殖民地维护，而生殖种姓则变得专门用于繁殖。尽管有这些重要的变化，但对蚂蚁生殖种姓内部形态演化的一般模式知之甚少。我们的目标是表征蚂蚁生殖种姓的形态变异，并测试不同性别的进化率是否存在变异。我们从总共678种蚂蚁中获得了897个标本的测量值。性别之间的大小分布形状相似，在所有特征中，女王/王后都比男性大，除了眼睛的长度。与基于伦施法则的期望相反，尽管皇后更大，但二态性的程度却随着体型的增加而增加。最后，有强有力的证据表明，皇后相对于雄性的形态进化速度加快。这些结果代表了蚂蚁生殖种姓中形态变异的首次综合治疗，并为其进化提供了重要的新见解。有强有力的证据表明，女王相对于雄性的形态进化速度加快。这些结果代表了蚂蚁生殖种姓中形态变异的首次综合治疗，并为其进化提供了重要的新见解。有强有力的证据表明，女王相对于雄性的形态进化速度加快。这些结果代表了蚂蚁生殖种姓中形态变异的首次综合治疗，并为其进化提供了重要的新见解。