Hourglass Model for Developmental Evolution of Ant Castes

New Genes Interacted With Recent Whole-Genome Duplicates in the Fast Stem Growth of Bamboos

“…As such, the development of woody bamboo shoot shows an “inverse hourglass” model for the evolutionary age of the transcriptome with old genes expressed at early and late stages. This is in contrast to the common hourglass model as found firstly for embryogenesis ( Domazet-Loso and Tautz 2010 ; Quint et al 2012 ; Levin et al 2016 ), and afterwards many postembryonic phases of plant development, with a phylotypic stage expressing the oldest transcriptome set ( Drost et al 2016 ; Leiboff and Hake 2019 ; Trible and Kronauer 2021 ). The transition stage from slow to fast growth may reflect the most unique features of shoot and thus the morphological and molecular patterns are coupled in the woody bamboos.…”

Adapting fundamental concepts from insect societies to the demands of bio-ontologies

“…Those components can (a) individually and directly influence the determination of the ‗caste' entity, or (b) synergistically operate along with other components of the same level of organization they belong to, composing a coarser level entity that, in turn, will directly influence the development of the ‗caste' entity. For example, one species of desert ant, Cataglyphis mauritanica (Emery, 1906a), has a strong genetic bias to ‗caste' development, such that, under normal circumstances, certain genotypes always develop in small workers (Trible & Kronauer 2020). However, juvenile hormone treatment causes worker-destined genotypes to develop into larger queens, while queen-destined genotypes will develop into small workers when reared in small colonies, where the larvae are likely starved (Kuhn et al 2018).…”

“…For example, one species of desert ant, Cataglyphis mauritanica (Emery, 1906a), has a strong genetic bias to ‘caste’ development, such that, under normal circumstances, certain genotypes always develop in small workers [61]. However, juvenile hormone treatment causes worker-destined genotypes to develop into larger queens, while queen- destined genotypes will develop into small workers when reared in small ‘colonies’, where the larvae are likely starved [62].…”

A caste differentiation mutant elucidates the evolution of socially parasitic ants

“…Most ant species have two distinct morphological castes: queens and workers ( Data S1 ). The developmental and genetic mechanisms that underpin these alternative phenotypes remain poorly understood 1 , 2 , however, and the study of caste development and evolution is largely limited to candidate genes from traditional model organisms, in part because it is impractical to isolate and characterize naturally occurring caste mutants using sexually reproducing ants.…”