Ocorrência de polidomia em formigas da subfamília Ponerinae

Abstract

Ants are eusocial insects, that present task Division, high index of social interactions and very close relatedness between members of a given colony. The physical and social structure of a colony can appear in many forms. A colony can have one, none or multiple queens (monogyny, orphan colonies or gamergate polygyny and polygyny), only one (monodomy) or more (polydomy) nests, socialy conected but spacialy separated that may be located in the trees, underground or on the surface, for example. Among all these variables, the focus of this review is to explore what there are in regard to the Ponerinae subfamily and in which way polydomy was identified in the species of this subfamily. All documents corresponding to polydomy in Ponerinae were selected. The oldest being from the year 1985 and the newest from the year 2020, achieving a total of 17 articles. The search for polydomy was made among all ants and specifically for each subfamily as well with the intent of verifying how much the theme has been explored in both the 1985-2020 interval and including all possible documents. Although some common factors were found, the evolutionary convergent nature of polydomy seems to lead to the conclusion that these factors do not have a graspable influence in the phenomena.