Colony Organisation and Division of Labour

Grüter, Christoph

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60090-7_6

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 125 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For these species, workers were marked at their emergency and returned to their nests. After 30 days, period in which workers of several stingless bees are known to perform forager tasks outside the nest (see Grüter 2020), the marked bees were collected. For T. angustula , we used RNA-Seq data generated in a previous study from foragers sampled in a similar manner (Araujo and Arias 2021) and, to treat our data for possible sequencing batch effects, we additionally sequenced one sample from three T. angustula workers collected from a nest at the Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the molecular basis of cleptobiosis in eusocial stingless bees (Apidae: Hymenoptera)

Ricardo,

Araujo,

Arias

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Cleptobiosis is a widespread strategy among animals in which members of one species raid for food or other valuable resources that were obtained by another species. Obligate cleptobiotic species are however rare, and the eu-social stingless bee Lestrimelitta limao features amongst these rare species. This bee pillages other stingless bee colonies. To provide some insights into the molecular basis and evolution of cleptobiosis in eusocial bees, here we compare transcriptomic data of foraging workers of the robber bee L. limao and three non-robber stingless bees: Nannotrigona testaceicornis, Scaptotrigona depilis, and Tetragonisca angustula. Our findings demon-strate that most of the orthologs identified as differentially expressed (DE) among the robber and the non-robber bees are downregulated in L. limao workers, showing a reduced expression activity in the cleptobiont during foraging. Several DE orthologs potentially regulate neuronal and synaptic activities in addition to other critical cellular functions. Additionally, dif-ferentially expressed orthologs associated with floral resource exploration and energetic metabolism were identified. These genes warrant further in-vestigation to enhance our understanding of the specific molecular adapta-tions associated with cleptobiosis in eusocial terms.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating the molecular basis of cleptobiosis in eusocial stingless bees (Apidae: Hymenoptera)

Ricardo,

Araujo,

Arias

2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Ants, social bees, and social wasps show a reproductive division of labor between queens and workers, where queens are responsible for reproduction and all other colony tasks are performed by workers of different ages. In many species, young workers focus on tasks inside the colony, such as feeding the brood, whereas older workers perform tasks outside their nest, such as foraging (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10). The behavioral maturation from innest work to foraging is affected by genetic factors such as parent-specific gene expression from mothers (matrigenes) and fathers (patrigenes) (11)(12)(13)(14) as well as sensory input from social and environmental stimuli (15)(16)(17).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Life Exposure to Queen Mandibular Pheromone Mediates Persistent Transcriptional Changes in the Brain of Honey bee Foragers

Peng

Kennedy

et al. 2022

Preprint

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How behavior in insect societies is regulated remains a fundamental question in sociobiology. In hymenopteran societies, the queen plays a crucial role in regulating group behavior by affecting individual behavior, physiology, and lifespan through worker gene expression. Honey bee (Apis mellifera) queens signal their presence via the queen mandibular pheromone (QMP). While QMP has been shown to influence the behavior of young workers, we know little about its long-term molecular impacts on workers and whether these pheromone effects depend on an early sensitive period in the life of a worker. Here we demonstrate that QMP treatment strongly impacts long-term forager gene expression in the mushroom bodies, antennal lobes, and antennae, but only if bees were treated early in life (1-2 days of age). Contrary to our expectation, foraging activity was not impacted by QMP treatment in the long-term, but genes important for division of labor, learning, chemosensory perception and aging were differentially expressed in the antennae and brain tissues, suggesting that QMP influences diverse physiological and behavioral processes in workers. Overall, our study suggests a sensitive period early in the life of workers, where the queens presence or absence has strong and potentially livelong effects on transcriptional activity in the central and peripheral nervous system.

show abstract

Colony Organisation and Division of Labour

Cited by 2 publications

References 125 publications

Investigating the molecular basis of cleptobiosis in eusocial stingless bees (Apidae: Hymenoptera)

Investigating the molecular basis of cleptobiosis in eusocial stingless bees (Apidae: Hymenoptera)

Early Life Exposure to Queen Mandibular Pheromone Mediates Persistent Transcriptional Changes in the Brain of Honey bee Foragers

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About