Revely, L;
Sumner, S;
Eggleton, P;
(2021)
The Plasticity and Developmental Potential of Termites.
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
, 9
, Article 552624. 10.3389/fevo.2021.552624.
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Abstract
Phenotypic plasticity provides organisms with the potential to adapt to their environment and can drive evolutionary innovations. Developmental plasticity is environmentally induced variation in phenotypes during development that arise from a shared genomic background. Social insects are useful models for studying the mechanisms of developmental plasticity, due to the phenotypic diversity they display in the form of castes. However, the literature has been biased towards the study of developmental plasticity in the holometabolous social insects (i.e. bees, wasps and ants); the hemimetabolous social insects (i.e. the termites) have received less attention. Here, we review the phenotypic complexity and diversity of termites as models for studying developmental plasticity. We argue that the current terminology used to define plastic phenotypes in social insects does not capture the diversity and complexity of these hemimetabolous social insects. We suggest that terminology used to describe levels of cellular potency could be helpful in describing the many levels of phenotypic plasticity in termites. Accordingly, we propose a conceptual framework for categorising the changes in potential of individuals to express alternative phenotypes through the developmental life stages of termites. We compile from the literature an exemplar dataset on the phenotypic potencies expressed within and between species across the phylogeny of the termites and use this to illustrate how the potencies of different life stages of different species can be described using this framework. We highlight how this conceptual framework can help exploit the rich phenotypic diversity of termites to address fundamental questions about the evolution and mechanisms of developmental plasticity. This conceptual contribution is likely to have wider relevance to the study of other hemimetabolous insects, such as aphids and gall-forming thrips, and may even prove useful for some holometabolous social insects which have high caste polyphenism.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Plasticity and Developmental Potential of Termites |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3389/fevo.2021.552624 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2021.552624 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2021 Revely, Sumner and Eggleton. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
| Keywords: | social insects, Blattodea, Caste differentiation, hemimetabolism, Soma, germline, Cellular Biology, Stem Cells, Isoptera (termites) |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences > Genetics, Evolution and Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10121111 |
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