Insects are at the dawn of an epigenetics era. Numerous social insect species have been found to possess a functioning methylation system, previously not thought to exist in insects. Methylation, an epigenetic tag, may be vital for the sociality and division of labour for which social insects are renowned. In the bumble-bee Bombus terrestris, we found methylation differences between the genomes of queenless reproductive workers and queenless non-reproductive workers. In a follow up experiment, queenless workers whose genomes had experimentally altered methylation were more aggressive and more likely to develop ovaries compared with control queenless workers. This shows methylation is important in this highly plastic reproductive division of labour. Methylation is an epigenetic tag for genomic imprinting (GI). It is intriguing that the main theory to explain the evolution of GI predicts that GI should be important in this worker reproduction behaviour.
The tropical Asian crab spider genus Pagida Simon, 1895 has remained taxonomically unrevised and has never been subjected to phylogenetic evaluation. The present study is designed to investigate the monophyly of the genus, its placement within Thomisidae and review all species. Our cladistic analysis, based on 78 morphological characters from 34 taxa (30 ingroup and four outgroup), demonstrates the monophyly of the genus and shows that Pagida is sister to Stiphropus Gerstäcker, 1873 within Thomisidae. The monophyly of Pagida and Pagida + Stiphropus is well supported. Pagida salticiformis (O. P.-Cambridge, 1883), the type species of Pagida, is redescribed from a series of specimens collected recently from its type locality, Sri Lanka. Pagida pseudorchestes is redescribed based on nine males and seven females. A new species, Pagida minuta, sp. nov., is described, based on four males and one female.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.