Radiation and hybridization underpin the spread of the fire ant social supergene

Abstract

Supergenes are clusters of tightly linked genes that jointly produce complex phenotypes. Although widespread in nature, how such genomic elements are formed and how they spread are in most cases unclear. In the fire ant Solenopsis invicta and closely related species, a “social supergene controls whether a colony maintains one or multiple queens. Here, we show that the three inversions constituting the Social b (Sb) supergene emerged sequentially during the separation of the ancestral lineages of S. invicta and Solenopsis richteri. The two first inversions arose in the ancestral population of both species, while the third one arose in the S. richteri lineage. Once completely assembled in the S. richteri lineage, the supergene first introgressed into S. invicta, and from there into the other species of the socially polymorphic group of South American fire ant species. Surprisingly, the introgression of this large and important genomic element occurred despite recent hybridization being uncommon between several of the species. These results highlight how supergenes can readily move across species boundaries, possibly because of fitness benefits they provide and/or expression of selfish properties favoring their transmission.