Sumner, Seirian;
Wyatt, Chris;
Bentley, Michael;
Taylor, Daisy;
Favreau, Emeline;
Brock, Ryan;
Taylor, Benjamin;
(2023)
Social complexity, life-history and lineage influence the molecular basis of castes in vespid wasps.
Nature Communications
, 14
, Article 1046. 10.1038/s41467-023-36456-6.
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Abstract
A key mechanistic hypothesis for the evolution of division of labour in social insects is that a shared set of genes co-opted from a common solitary ancestral ground plan (a genetic toolkit for sociality) regulates caste differentiation across levels of social complexity. Using brain transcriptome data from nine species of vespid wasps, we test for overlap in differentially expressed caste genes and use machine learning models to predict castes using different gene sets. We find evidence of a shared genetic toolkit across species representing different levels of social complexity. We also find evidence of additional fine-scale differences in predictive gene sets, functional enrichment and rates of gene evolution that are related to level of social complexity, lineage and of colony founding. These results suggest that the concept of a shared genetic toolkit for sociality may be too simplistic to fully describe the process of the major transition to sociality.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Social complexity, life-history and lineage influence the molecular basis of castes in vespid wasps |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41467-023-36456-6 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36456-6 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| 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/10165568 |
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