Journal
ANNUAL REVIEW OF GENETICS, VOL 46
Volume 46, Issue -, Pages 97-119Publisher
ANNUAL REVIEWS
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-genet-110711-155610
Keywords
genetic mapping; reproductive ground plan; pollen hoarding syndrome; evo-devo; insulin signaling; social evolution
Categories
Funding
- NIA NIH HHS [P01AG22500, P01 AG022500] Funding Source: Medline
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON AGING [P01AG022500] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
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Honeybees form complex societies with a division of labor for reproduction, nutrition, nest construction and maintenance, and defense. How does it evolve? Tasks performed by worker honeybees are distributed in time and space. There is no central control over behavior and there is no central genome on which selection can act and effect adaptive change. For 22 years, we have been addressing these questions by selecting on a single social trait associated with nutrition: the amount of surplus pollen (a source of protein) that is stored in the combs of the nest. Forty-two generations of selection have revealed changes at biological levels extending from the society down to the level of the gene. We show how we constructed this vertical understanding of social evolution using behavioral and anatomical analyses, physiology, genetic mapping, and gene knockdowns. We map out the phenotypic and genetic architectures of food storage and foraging behavior and show how they are linked through broad epistasis and pleiotropy affecting a reproductive regulatory network that influences foraging behavior. This is remarkable because worker honeybees have reduced reproductive organs and are normally sterile; however, the reproductive regulatory network has been co-opted for behavioral division of labor.
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