Functional genomics of parental care of insects

Abstract

Parental care was likely the first step most lineages made towards sociality. However, the molecular mechanisms that generate parental care are not broadly characterized. Insects are important as an evolutionary independent group from classic models of parental care, such as, house mice. They provide an opportunity to test the generality of our understanding. With this review, I survey the functional genomics of parental care of insects, summarize several recent advances in the broader framework for studying and understanding parental care, and finish with suggested priorities for further research.Although there are too few studies to draw definitive conclusions, I argue that natural selection appears to be rewiring existing gene networks to produce parental care, that the epigenetic mechanisms influencing parental care are not well understood, and, as an interesting early consensus, that genes strongly associated with carer/offspring interactions appear biased toward proteins that are secreted. I summarize the studies that have functionally validate candidate genes and highlight the increasing need to perform this work. I finish with arguments for both conceptual and practical changes moving forward. I argue that future work can increase the use of predictive frameworks, broaden its definition of conservation of mechanism to gene networks rather than single genes, and increase the use of more established comparative methods. I further highlight the practical considerations of standardizing analyses and reporting, increasing the sampling of both carers and offspring, better characterizing gene regulatory networks, better characterizing taxonomically restricted genes and any consistent role they have underpinning parental care, and using factorial designs to disentangle the influence of multiple variables on the expression of parental care.

Parental care shapes the evolution of molecular genetic variation

“…While much attention has been paid to identifying genes that drive social behaviours [1,2], relatively few studies have focused on how changes in social behaviour could affect the accumulation and maintenance of genetic variation. Yet, social living is associated with large-scale restructuring and the evolution of genome organization and architecture [3].…”

Evolutionarily stable strategy analysis and its links to demography and genetics through invasion fitness

“…[74][75][76][77][78]); specifically, some have argued that understanding these data requires moving beyond the gambit with more explicit consideration of complex genetic and demographic mechanisms (e.g. [79][80][81][82]). Question (ii) arises here and asks whether the ESS method can be modified to accommodate other evolutionary forces such as mutation and recombination.…”

Behavioural repertoire and the effect of male removal in a geotrupid beetle with parental care

“…Parental care, defined as any behaviour of the parent that increases its offspring's fitness (Trumbo, 2012), is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, yet the rich diversity of this behaviour exhibited by insects awaits to be fully explored and understood (Costa, 2006; Cunningham, 2020). As in vertebrates, insect females provide care more frequently than males in cases where care is part of the behavioural repertoire of the species (Kokko & Jennions, 2012; Trumbo, 2012).…”