Vollenhovia emeryi

In Japan, V. emeryi occurs in secondary forests throughout the country. This ant can produce clonal, non-dispersing queens and dispersing long-winged, heterozygous queens.

Distribution based on Regional Taxon Lists
Nearctic Region: United States. Oriental Region: Taiwan, Thailand. Palaearctic Region: China, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Japan, Republic of Korea.

Biology
Miyakawa et al. (2018) studied the details of genetic control of sex deterimination in this species. They concluded the doublesex (dsx) gene appears to work in concert with a multi-locus complementary sex determination system to control if females or males develop from an egg.

Reproduction
This species has two modes of reproduction. Clonally produced, homozygous queens have short malformed wings. Long-winged dispersing queens, with heterozygous genomes and so not produced clonally, can be produced facultatively. Queens eclose before fall hibernation. Clonal queens mate in their natal nest before hibernation. In the spring new colonies can be formed by budding. Laboratory colonies collected from field sites in Japan and provided with more food than a second set of colonies produced long-winged queens, non-dispersing queens and more queens overall. The colonies that were fed half as much food only produced clonal short-winged queens. Laboratory produced long-winged queens were not inseminated after eclosing while the short-winged queens were all found to be inseminated. Presumably the long-winged queens mate after hibernation in the spring (Okomoto et al. 2015, Ohkawara et al. 2002).

Genetics
The genome of V. emeryi was sequenced for a study examining how parasitic ants with no worker caste may have altered their genome to arrive at a workerless state. In comparison to ants with a full complement of castes, there appeared to be no loss of genes in the parasitic ants. This suggests regulatory differences and not sequence differences predominate in gains and losses of castes (phenotypes). (Smith et al. 2015)

Nomenclature

 *  emeryi. Vollenhovia emeryi Wheeler, W.M. 1906c: 312, pl. 41, figs. 10, 11 (w.q.) JAPAN. Wheeler, W.M. 1928d: 112 (m.); Imai, 1966: 119 (k.). Senior synonym of chosenica: Radchenko, 2005b: 154.
 * chosenica. Vollenhovia emeryi subsp. chosenica Wheeler, W.M. 1928d: 113 (w.) KOREA. Junior synonym of emeryi: Radchenko, 2005b: 154.