Genetic Differentiation between Color Morphs of a Color-Polymorphic Aphid, Macrosiphoniella yomogicola
2019
Maintenance of intraspecific polymorphisms is important for biodiversity. The aphid Macrosiphoniella yomogicola has two color
morphs (green and red) in Hokkaido. Their primary attending ants (Lasius japonicus) can manipulate the frequency of the green
morph to match that of the red morph to maintain the polymorphism in an aphid colony. Ants prefer the green morph owing
to its high-quality honeydew; however, the ants intentionally maintain nutritionally inferior red morphs in every colony because
the ants only manipulate the reproductive rate of the green morph, i.e., the ants discriminate between the two morphs. Thus, the
benefit of the red morphs to the ants should differ from nutrient exploitation. This hypothesis requires a genetic trade-off between
the two morphs. Here based on three microsatellites, we show that the genetic distance between both morphs collected from
the same sampling site is small suggesting that there is no genetic differentiation between their whole genomes. However, there
were significant differences between the two morphs at a locus at the three sites examined. Our results suggest that intermorph
copulations occur; however, the loci controlling morph-specific traits should be linked with the differentiated locus.
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