Honey bee aggression supports a link between gene regulation and behavioral evolution.

ABSTRACT: A prominent theory states that animal phenotypes arise by evolutionary changes in gene regulation, but the extent to which this theory holds true for behavioral evolution is not known. Because "nature and nurture" are now understood to involve hereditary and environmental influences on gene expression, we studied whether environmental influences on a behavioral phenotype, i.e., aggression, could have evolved into inherited differences via changes in gene expression. Here, with microarray analysis of honey bees, we show that aggression-related genes with inherited patterns of brain expression are also environmentally regulated. There were expression differences in the brain for hundreds of genes between the highly aggressive Africanized honey bee compared with European honey bee (EHB) subsp

SUBMITTER: Alaux C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2730357 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature