ArticleNature ecology & evolution2022
Canalized gene expression during development mediates caste differentiation in ants.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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22 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Developmental bias of body size and caste by the fire ant social supergene.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2026Article
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- Gene Expression and Alternative Splicing Regulate Phenotypic Plasticity of a Social Wasp.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Unmated Queens Show Worker-Like Behaviour and Gene Expression in Polygynous Colonies of the Ant Stigmatomma pallipes.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
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- Convergent evolution of a conserved molecular network underlies parenting and sociality.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- Fraternal cooperation of hierarchical cancer parallels metazoan multicellularity and eusociality.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Comparative analysis of 163 ant genomes reveals recurrent horizontal gene transfer from bacteria to ants.GigaScience · 2026Article
- A novel Hox gene promoter fuels the evolution of adaptive phenotypic plasticity in wing eyespots of satyrid butterflies.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Age, caste, and social context shape ovarian morphology and transcriptomic profiles in red harvester ants.npj aging · 2025Article
- Article
- Static allometries of caste-associated traits vary with genotype but not environment in the clonal raider ant.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Localized Tissue-Specific Gene Expression and Gene Duplications are Important Sources of Social Morph Differences in a Social Bumblebee.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Innovation in ant larval feeding facilitated queen-worker divergence and social complexity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- From Egg to Adult: A Developmental Table of the Ant Monomorium pharaonis.Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution · 2024Article
- Juvenile hormone as a key regulator for asymmetric caste differentiation in ants.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Article
- Phenomenon of reproductive plasticity in ants.Current opinion in insect science · 2024Review
- A genetic toolkit underlying the queen phenotype in termites with totipotent workers.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Molecular signatures of alternative reproductive strategies in a facultatively social hover wasp.Molecular ecology · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
20 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ant colonies are higher-level organisms consisting of specialized reproductive and non-reproductive individuals that differentiate early in development, similar to germ-soma segregation in bilateral Metazoa. Analogous to diverging cell lines, developmental differentiation of individual ants has often been considered in epigenetic terms but the sets of genes that determine caste phenotypes throughout larval and pupal development remain unknown. Here, we reconstruct the individual developmental trajectories of two ant species, Monomorium pharaonis and Acromyrmex echinatior, after obtaining >1,400 whole-genome transcriptomes. Using a new backward prediction algorithm, we show that caste phenotypes can be accurately predicted by genome-wide transcriptome profiling. We find that caste differentiation is increasingly canalized from early development onwards, particularly in germline individuals (gynes/queens) and that the juvenile hormone signalling pathway plays a key role in this process by regulating body mass divergence between castes. We quantified gene-specific canalization levels and found that canalized genes with gyne/queen-biased expression were enriched for ovary and wing functions while canalized genes with worker-biased expression were enriched in brain and behavioural functions. Suppression in gyne larvae of Freja, a highly canalized gyne-biased ovary gene, disturbed pupal development by inducing non-adaptive intermediate phenotypes between gynes and workers. Our results are consistent with natural selection actively maintaining canalized caste phenotypes while securing robustness in the life cycle ontogeny of ant colonies.
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