Leveraging technological innovations to investigate evolutionary transitions to eusociality

Arsenault, Samuel V.; Glastad, Karl M.; Hunt, Brendan G.

doi:10.1016/j.cois.2019.03.003

Cited by 2 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…This also points to the advantages of taking a network approach to analyzing gene expression data, in addition to traditional differential expression statistics 93,150,153 . Key general questions here include how ecological factors interact with solitary insect gene regulatory networks in order to allow for the transition to eusociality 18,154 , and in which ways these transitions toward eusociality are unique vs. universal 18,71,155 .…”

Section: Predictions For Glandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, the epigenetic plasticity of eusocial insect workers situates them as tractable models to disentangle genetic and environmental influences on behavior 88,163 . 29,120,146,155,164 .…”

Section: Future Directions and Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, new techniques can be integrated in eusocial insect taxa to bring about multidisciplinary synthesis. Recent and ongoing studies are combining natural history, automated behavioral analysis, DNA/RNA-sequencing, transgenic techniques, and pharmacological manipulations 29,120,146,155,164 .…”

Section: Future Directions and Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Promising experimental approaches in the social insects could use RNA-Seq, proteomics, and metabolomics on the same tissue-specific samples across the classes of individuals (e.g., developing larvae, adult nurses 152 ) involved in colony physiological processes. It is especially interesting to combine these functional genomic analyses with computational methods such as the automated tracking of behavior from video data 114,155,168 . For example worker-level tracking can assess how worker heterogeneity leads to colony foraging performance 169,170 , or how trophallaxis networks provide robustness to variability in colony resource intake 171 .…”

Section: Future Directions and Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Distributed physiology and the molecular basis of social life in eusocial insects

Friedman

Johnson

Linksvayer

2020

Hormones and Behavior

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The traditional focus of physiological and functional genomic research is on molecular processes that play out within a single body. In contrast, when social interactions occur, molecular and behavioral responses in interacting individuals can lead to physiological processes that are distributed across multiple individuals. In eusocial insect colonies, such multi-body processes are tightly integrated, involving social communication mechanisms that regulate the physiology of colony members. As a result, conserved physiological mechanisms, for example related to pheromone detection and neural signaling pathways, are deployed in novel contexts and regulate emergent colony traits during the evolutionary origin and elaboration of social complexity. Here we review conceptual frameworks for organismal and colony physiology, and highlight functional genomic, physiological, and behavioral research exploring how colony-level traits arise from physical and chemical interactions among nestmates. We highlight mechanistic work exploring how colony traits arise from physical and chemical interactions among physiologically-specialized nestmates of 1 various developmental stages. We consider similarities and differences between organismal and colony physiology, and make specific predictions based on a decentralized perspective on the function and evolution of colony traits. Integrated models of colony physiological function will be useful to address fundamental questions related to the evolution and ecology of collective behavior in natural systems. Colony Organization = Social Anatomy + Social PhysiologyEusocial colonial insects, such as ants, termites, and honey bees, thrive across almost all terrestrial ecosystems 1,2 . The ecological success of these species rests in their use of colony traits, such as nest architecture 3,4 and collective foraging behavior 5-7 , which are functionally absent in solitary insects yet keenly developed in eusocial taxa. In the eusocial insects, division of labor (DOL) describes how nestmates vary in their form and function. DOL formalizes the extent of specialization among nestmates in the performance of tasks, usually with a physiological or morphological basis or arising from nestmate age (temporal polyethism) and experience [8][9][10][11] . We build off of the conceptual framework of Johnson & Linksvayer 12 that considers eusocial colony organization from the perspective of social anatomy & social physiology : Social anatomy is the notion that colonies are composed of specialized parts with limited roles, like the organs of an individual animal. Specialized colony anatomy allows for greater productivity and efficiency for the completion of many tasks.Physiological specialization exists at multiple levels within the colony. Queen-worker specialization allows for an increased reproductive output of queens alongside increased work output from workers, from the same diploid female genome 13 .Subspecialization among workers can manifest as permanent variation in body morphology 14 , temporal polyet...

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Section: Predictions For Glandsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, the epigenetic plasticity of eusocial insect workers situates them as tractable models to disentangle genetic and environmental influences on behavior 88,163 . 29,120,146,155,164 .…”

Section: Future Directions and Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Future Directions and Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Future Directions and Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Distributed physiology and the molecular basis of social life in eusocial insects

Friedman

Johnson

Linksvayer

2020

Hormones and Behavior

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“…Injection of dsRNA in ants have yielded more dramatic results in Harpegnathos saltator and Pheidole hyatti (Gospocic et al, 2017;Rajakumar et al, 2018), reviewed in Arsenault et al (2019). In H. saltator, an ant that has "unusual reproductive flexibility" in that a sterile worker of a colony that has lost a queen is able to convert to a reproductive status, RNAi facilitated the identification of a gene critical to caste identity, corazonin (Gospocic et al, 2017).…”

Section: Rnai Applied To Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prospects for Using RNAi as Control for Ants

Allen

2021

Front. Agron.

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RNA interference (RNAi) has inspired insect scientists to aim toward the development of this technology for protection against insect pests. The RNAi mechanism works at the intracellular level by exploiting a mode of action specific to the expression of genes, interrupting the transcription to translation process. Many of the limitations of RNAi technology are being addressed to adapt it for insect pest application. However, most of the insect pest problems for which RNAi is being developed involve direct plant-insect interactions, primarily in monocultures. Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) are important agricultural pests that generally do not feed directly on crops, yet have dramatic impact on agroecosystems such as pastures, orchards, and nurseries. The application of RNAi to pest ants is complicated by the social nature of ants. Here the goal is to examine the potential application of RNAi to ant pests, especially invasive ants, which present distinct challenges with regard to delivery, targeting, efficacy, and risks.

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Leveraging technological innovations to investigate evolutionary transitions to eusociality

Cited by 2 publications

References 60 publications

Distributed physiology and the molecular basis of social life in eusocial insects

Distributed physiology and the molecular basis of social life in eusocial insects

Prospects for Using RNAi as Control for Ants

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