Juvenile hormone as a key regulator for asymmetric caste differentiation in ants.

ABSTRACT: Caste differentiation involves many functional traits that diverge during larval growth and metamorphosis to produce adults irreversibly adapted to reproductive division of labor. Investigating developmental differentiation is important for general biological understanding and has increasingly been explored for social phenotypes that diverge in parallel from similar genotypes. Here, we use Monomorium pharaonis ants to investigate the extent to which canalized worker development can be shifted toward gyne (virgin-queen) phenotypes by juvenile hormone (JH) treatment. We show that excess JH can activate gyne-biased development in workers so that wing-buds, ocelli, antennal and genital imaginal discs, flight muscles, and gyne-like fat bodies and brains emerge after pupation. However, ov

SUBMITTER: Li R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11573667 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature