Differential gene expression and protein abundance evince ontogenetic bias toward castes in a primitively eusocial wasp.

ABSTRACT: Polistes paper wasps are models for understanding conditions that may have characterized the origin of worker and queen castes and, therefore, the origin of paper wasp sociality. Polistes is "primitively eusocial" by virtue of having context-dependent caste determination and no morphological differences between castes. Even so, Polistes colonies have a temporal pattern in which most female larvae reared by the foundress become workers, and most reared by workers become future-reproductive gynes. This pattern is hypothesized to reflect development onto two pathways, which may utilize mechanisms that regulate diapause in other insects. Using expressed sequence tags (ESTs) for Polistes metricus we selected candidate genes differentially expressed in other insects in three categories: 1) diapa

SUBMITTER: Hunt JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2871793 | biostudies-literature | 2010 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature