Wasp Gene Expression Supports an Evolutionary Link Between Maternal Behavior and Eusociality

Abstract

The presence of workers that forgo reproduction and care for their siblings is a defining feature of eusociality and a major challenge for evolutionary theory. It has been proposed that worker behavior evolved from maternal care behavior. We explored this idea by studying gene expression in the primitively eusocial wasp Polistes metricus. Because little genomic information existed for this species, we used 454 sequencing to generate 391,157 brain complementary DNA reads, resulting in robust hits to 3017 genes from the honey bee genome, from which we identified and assayed orthologs of 32 honey bee behaviorally related genes. Wasp brain gene expression in workers was more similar to that in foundresses, which show maternal care, than to that in queens and gynes, which do not. Insulin-related genes were among the differentially regulated genes, suggesting that the evolution of eusociality involved major nutritional and reproductive pathways.

Community genetics: what have we accomplished and where should we be going?

“…gene expression) in virtually any organism, and often at a much lower cost than traditional capillary-based or Sanger's sequencing and microarray methods [91][92][93]. Recently, these technologies have been successfully employed to identify genes within non-model organisms that are differentially expressed between species [94,95], between genotypes within species exposed to different herbicide treatments [91] and between individuals from the same genotype exposed to different pathogen environments [95].…”

Applications of next generation sequencing in molecular ecology of non-model organisms

“…For example, (Toth et al, 2007) focused on candidate genes for food provisioning and foraging behaviour in their study of a primitively eusocial wasp (Polistes metricus). By 454 sequencing of the transcriptome and aligning the reads to the honey bee genome, they were able to annotate these candidate genes and perform follow up real-time quantitative PCR experiments to study differential gene expression in different social casts of the wasp species.…”

“…Here, cDNA is synthesized by reverse transcription of mRNA and then sequenced. The first study describing the transcriptome in a non-model species through NGS was performed on the wasp Polistes metricus (Toth et al, 2007). Here, genome information from the related honey bee was used as template (see Glossary) for mapping the reads (see Glossary) from 454 sequencing and for downstream analysis.…”

Subtle effect of Xenos vesparum (Xenidae, Strepsiptera) on the reproductive apparatus of its male host: Parasite or parasitoid?

“…Research on Polistes wasps, from the first physio-ethological study by Leo Pardi (1948) to more recent molecular phylogeny and sociogenomics (Schmitz and Moritz, 1998;Carpenter, 2003;Sumner et al, 2006;Toth et al, 2007Toth et al, , 2010Toth et al, , 2014Berens et al, 2015Berens et al, , 2016Geffre et al, 2017), has been mainly focused on the socially competitive and cooperative females, while the male phenotype has not received equal attention Heinze, 2016). The "so transparently Darwinian" scenario (West-Eberhard, 2006) regulating social life among females has centered the interest on the colony.…”