Queens and Workers Contribute Differently to Adaptive Evolution in Bumble Bees and Honey Bees.

ABSTRACT: Eusociality represents a major transition in evolution and is typified by cooperative brood care and reproductive division of labor between generations. In bees, this division of labor allows queens and workers to phenotypically specialize. Worker traits associated with helping are thought to be crucial to the fitness of a eusocial lineage, and recent studies of honey bees (genus Apis) have found that adaptively evolving genes often have worker-biased expression patterns. It is unclear however if worker-biased genes are disproportionately acted on by strong positive selection in all eusocial insects. We undertook a comparative population genomics study of bumble bees (Bombus) and honey bees to quantify natural selection on queen- and worker-biased genes across two levels of social complexi

SUBMITTER: Harpur BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5622336 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature