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Identity of the two wing morphs of a Korean Vollenhovia species
The little sized ant species, Vollenhovia emeryi Wheeler (Hymenoptera: Myrmicinae) is the only species belonging to genus Vollenhovia in South Korea, and it is endemic in East Asia encompassing Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan and has recently invaded into North America. In this species, the queen caste shows polymorphism in its wing form, the queen with normal wings called the long-winged (L) queen and short-winged (S) queen with aberrant small wings, and the two morphs are thought not to coexist in nature, however the morphology of workers and males of the two wing morphs are indistinguishable. We obtained a L gyne from a S colony that had been maintained in the laboratory. In addition, we compared the genome size of entire castes of the two wing morphs using flowcytometry. Our results confirm that the two wing morphs are obviously the same species, and moreover, the wing morph may be determinated by the epigenetical process.
