Recurring adaptive introgression of a supergene that determines social organization

Introgression has been proposed as an essential source of trait adaptation. However, a key barrier to adaptive introgression is that recombination can break down combinations of alleles that underpin many traits. Supergene regions, where suppressed recombination leads to joint inheritance of alleles at many loci, could overcome this challenge. Here, we study the evolution of a large supergene region that determines a major social and ecological trait in Solenopsis fire ants: whether colonies have one queen or multiple queens. Using coalescent-based phylogenies built from the genomes of 365 haploid fire ant males, we show that the supergene variant responsible for multiple-queen colonies evolved in one species and repeatedly spread to other species through introgressive hybridization. This finding highlights how supergene architecture can enable a complex adaptive phenotype to recurrently permeate species boundaries.