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Orr SE, Hedrick NA, Murray KA, Pasupuleti AK, Kovacs JL, Goodisman MAD. Genetic and environmental effects on morphological traits of social phenotypes in wasps. Heredity (Edinb) 2024; 133:126-136. [PMID: 38918612 PMCID: PMC11286790 DOI: 10.1038/s41437-024-00701-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/27/2023] [Revised: 06/14/2024] [Accepted: 06/17/2024] [Indexed: 06/27/2024] Open
Abstract
Many species exhibit distinct phenotypic classes, such as sexes in dioecious species or castes in social species. The evolution of these classes is affected by the genetic architecture governing traits shared between phenotypes. However, estimates of the genetic and environmental factors contributing to phenotypic variation in distinct classes have rarely been examined. We studied the genetic architecture underlying morphological traits in phenotypic classes in the social wasp Vespula maculifrons. Our data revealed patriline effects on a few traits, indicating weak genetic influences on caste phenotypic variation. Interestingly, traits exhibited higher heritability in queens than workers. This result suggests that genetic variation has a stronger influence on trait variation in the queen caste than the worker caste, which is unexpected because queens typically experience direct selection. Moreover, estimates of heritability for traits were correlated between the castes, indicating that variability in trait size was governed by similar genetic architecture in the two castes. However, we failed to find evidence for a significant relationship between caste dimorphism and caste correlation, as would be expected if trait evolution was constrained by intralocus genetic conflict. Our analyses also uncovered variation in the allometric relationships for traits. These analyses suggested that worker traits were proportionally smaller than queen traits for most traits examined. Overall, our data provide evidence for a strong environmental and moderate genetic basis of trait variation among castes. Moreover, our results suggest that selection previously operated on caste phenotype in this species, and phenotypic variation is now governed primarily by environmental differences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sarah E Orr
- Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, 310 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, 30318, Georgia
| | - Nicole A Hedrick
- Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, 310 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, 30318, Georgia
| | - Kayla A Murray
- Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, 310 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, 30318, Georgia
| | - Abhinav K Pasupuleti
- Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, 310 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, 30318, Georgia
| | - Jennifer L Kovacs
- Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, 310 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, 30318, Georgia
- Agnes Scott College, Department of Biology, 141 East College Avenue, Decatur, 30030, Georgia
| | - Michael A D Goodisman
- Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, 310 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, 30318, Georgia.
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Frank DD, Kronauer DJC. The Budding Neuroscience of Ant Social Behavior. Annu Rev Neurosci 2024; 47:167-185. [PMID: 38603564 DOI: 10.1146/annurev-neuro-083023-102101] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/13/2024]
Abstract
Ant physiology has been fashioned by 100 million years of social evolution. Ants perform many sophisticated social and collective behaviors yet possess nervous systems similar in schematic and scale to that of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, a popular solitary model organism. Ants are thus attractive complementary subjects to investigate adaptations pertaining to complex social behaviors that are absent in flies. Despite research interest in ant behavior and the neurobiological foundations of sociality more broadly, our understanding of the ant nervous system is incomplete. Recent technical advances have enabled cutting-edge investigations of the nervous system in a fashion that is less dependent on model choice, opening the door for mechanistic social insect neuroscience. In this review, we revisit important aspects of what is known about the ant nervous system and behavior, and we look forward to how functional circuit neuroscience in ants will help us understand what distinguishes solitary animals from highly social ones.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dominic D Frank
- Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA; ,
| | - Daniel J C Kronauer
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute, New York, NY, USA
- Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA; ,
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Jablonszky M, Canal D, Hegyi G, Herényi M, Laczi M, Markó G, Nagy G, Rosivall B, Szöllősi E, Török J, Garamszegi LZ. The estimation of additive genetic variance of body size in a wild passerine is sensitive to the method used to estimate relatedness among the individuals. Ecol Evol 2024; 14:e10981. [PMID: 38352200 PMCID: PMC10862163 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.10981] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/01/2023] [Revised: 01/17/2024] [Accepted: 01/23/2024] [Indexed: 02/16/2024] Open
Abstract
Assessing additive genetic variance is a crucial step in predicting the evolutionary response of a target trait. However, the estimated genetic variance may be sensitive to the methodology used, e.g., the way relatedness is assessed among the individuals, especially in wild populations where social pedigrees can be inaccurate. To investigate this possibility, we investigated the additive genetic variance in tarsus length, a major proxy of skeletal body size in birds. The model species was the collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis), a socially monogamous but genetically polygamous migratory passerine. We used two relatedness matrices to estimate the genetic variance: (1) based solely on social links and (2) a genetic similarity matrix based on a large array of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Depending on the relatedness matrix considered, we found moderate to high additive genetic variance and heritability estimates for tarsus length. In particular, the heritability estimates were higher when obtained with the genetic similarity matrix instead of the social pedigree. Our results confirm the potential for this crucial trait to respond to selection and highlight methodological concerns when calculating additive genetic variance and heritability in phenotypic traits. We conclude that using a social pedigree instead of a genetic similarity matrix to estimate relatedness among individuals in a genetically polygamous wild population may significantly deflate the estimates of additive genetic variation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mónika Jablonszky
- Evolutionary Ecology Research GroupInstitute of Ecology and Botany, HUN_REN Centre for Ecological ResearchVácrátotHungary
- Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Systematic Zoology and EcologyELTE Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapestHungary
| | - David Canal
- Department of Evolutionary EcologyNational Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN‐CSIC)MadridSpain
| | - Gergely Hegyi
- Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Systematic Zoology and EcologyELTE Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapestHungary
| | - Márton Herényi
- Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Systematic Zoology and EcologyELTE Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapestHungary
- Department of Zoology and EcologyHungarian University of Agriculture and Life SciencesGodolloHungary
| | - Miklós Laczi
- Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Systematic Zoology and EcologyELTE Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapestHungary
- HUN‐REN‐ELTE‐MTM Integrative Ecology Research GroupBudapestHungary
| | - Gábor Markó
- Department of Plant Pathology, Institute of Plant ProtectionHungarian University of Agriculture and Life SciencesBudapestHungary
| | - Gergely Nagy
- Evolutionary Ecology Research GroupInstitute of Ecology and Botany, HUN_REN Centre for Ecological ResearchVácrátotHungary
- Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Systematic Zoology and EcologyELTE Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapestHungary
| | - Balázs Rosivall
- Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Systematic Zoology and EcologyELTE Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapestHungary
| | - Eszter Szöllősi
- Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Systematic Zoology and EcologyELTE Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapestHungary
| | - János Török
- Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Systematic Zoology and EcologyELTE Eötvös Loránd UniversityBudapestHungary
| | - László Zsolt Garamszegi
- Evolutionary Ecology Research GroupInstitute of Ecology and Botany, HUN_REN Centre for Ecological ResearchVácrátotHungary
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Ioannou CC, Laskowski KL. A multi-scale review of the dynamics of collective behaviour: from rapid responses to ontogeny and evolution. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2023; 378:20220059. [PMID: 36802782 PMCID: PMC9939272 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0059] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/25/2023] [Accepted: 01/26/2023] [Indexed: 02/21/2023] Open
Abstract
Collective behaviours, such as flocking in birds or decision making by bee colonies, are some of the most intriguing behavioural phenomena in the animal kingdom. The study of collective behaviour focuses on the interactions between individuals within groups, which typically occur over close ranges and short timescales, and how these interactions drive larger scale properties such as group size, information transfer within groups and group-level decision making. To date, however, most studies have focused on snapshots, typically studying collective behaviour over short timescales up to minutes or hours. However, being a biological trait, much longer timescales are important in animal collective behaviour, particularly how individuals change over their lifetime (the domain of developmental biology) and how individuals change from one generation to the next (the domain of evolutionary biology). Here, we give an overview of collective behaviour across timescales from the short to the long, illustrating how a full understanding of this behaviour in animals requires much more research attention on its developmental and evolutionary biology. Our review forms the prologue of this special issue, which addresses and pushes forward understanding the development and evolution of collective behaviour, encouraging a new direction for collective behaviour research. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Collective behaviour through time'.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Kate L. Laskowski
- Department of Evolution and Ecology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA
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Wice EW, Saltz JB. Indirect genetic effects for social network structure in Drosophila melanogaster. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2023; 378:20220075. [PMID: 36802774 PMCID: PMC9939268 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0075] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2022] [Accepted: 12/16/2022] [Indexed: 02/21/2023] Open
Abstract
The position an individual holds in a social network is dependent on both its direct and indirect social interactions. Because social network position is dependent on the actions and interactions of conspecifics, it is likely that the genotypic composition of individuals within a social group impacts individuals' network positions. However, we know very little about whether social network positions have a genetic basis, and even less about how the genotypic makeup of a social group impacts network positions and structure. With ample evidence indicating that network positions influence various fitness metrics, studying how direct and indirect genetic effects shape network positions is crucial for furthering our understanding of how the social environment can respond to selection and evolve. Using replicate genotypes of Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies, we created social groups that varied in their genotypic makeup. Social groups were videoed, and networks were generated using motion-tracking software. We found that both an individual's own genotype and the genotypes of conspecifics in its social group affect its position within a social network. These findings provide an early example of how indirect genetic effects and social network theory can be linked, and shed new light on how quantitative genetic variation shapes the structure of social groups. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Collective behaviour through time'.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eric Wesley Wice
- Department of Biosciences, Rice University, Houston, TX 77005, USA
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Di Pietro V, Govoni P, Chan KH, Oliveira RC, Wenseleers T, van den Berg P. Evolution of self-organised division of labour driven by stigmergy in leaf-cutter ants. Sci Rep 2022; 12:21971. [PMID: 36539468 PMCID: PMC9768137 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-26324-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/14/2022] [Accepted: 12/13/2022] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Social insects owe their widespread success to their ability to efficiently coordinate behaviour to carry out complex tasks. Several leaf-cutter ant species employ an advanced type of division of labour known as task partitioning, where the task of retrieving leaves is distributed between workers that cut and drop and those that collect the fallen leaves. It is not entirely clear how such highly coordinated behaviour can evolve, as it would seem to require the simultaneous mutations of multiple traits during the same generation. Here, we use an agent-based simulation model to show how task partitioning in leaf-cutter ants can gradually evolve by exploiting stigmergy (indirect coordination through the environment) through gravity (leaves falling from the treetop on the ground forming a cache). Our simple model allows independent variation in two core behavioural dimensions: the tendency to drop leaves and the tendency to pick up dropped leaves. Task partitioning readily evolves even under these minimal assumptions through adaptation to an arboreal environment where traveling up and down the tree is costly. Additionally, we analyse ant movement dynamics to demonstrate how the ants achieve efficient task allocation through task switching and negative feedback control.
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Affiliation(s)
- Viviana Di Pietro
- grid.5596.f0000 0001 0668 7884Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution, Department of Biology, KU Leuven, Naamsestraat 59, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
| | - Patrick Govoni
- grid.5596.f0000 0001 0668 7884Dynamics in Biological Systems Lab, Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, KU Leuven, Herestraat 49, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
| | - Kin Ho Chan
- Laboratory of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Genomics, Charles Deberiostraat 32, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
| | - Ricardo Caliari Oliveira
- grid.5596.f0000 0001 0668 7884Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution, Department of Biology, KU Leuven, Naamsestraat 59, 3000 Leuven, Belgium ,grid.7080.f0000 0001 2296 0625Departament de Biologia Animal, de Biologia Vegetal I d’Ecologia - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona Spain
| | - Tom Wenseleers
- grid.5596.f0000 0001 0668 7884Laboratory of Socioecology and Social Evolution, Department of Biology, KU Leuven, Naamsestraat 59, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
| | - Pieter van den Berg
- grid.5596.f0000 0001 0668 7884Evolutionary Modelling Group, KU Leuven, Naamsestraat 59, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
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Walsh JT, Garonski A, Jackan C, Linksvayer TA. The Collective Behavior of Ant Groups Depends on Group Genotypic Composition. J Hered 2021; 113:102-108. [PMID: 34634803 DOI: 10.1093/jhered/esab045] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/30/2021] [Accepted: 08/06/2021] [Indexed: 11/12/2022] Open
Abstract
Recently, researchers have documented variation between groups in collective behavior. However, how genetic variation within and between groups contributes to population-level variation for collective behavior remains unclear. Understanding how genetic variation of group members relates to group-level phenotypes is evolutionarily important because there is increasing evidence that group-level behavioral variation influences fitness and that the genetic architecture of group-level traits can affect the evolutionary dynamics of traits. Social insects are ideal for studying the complex relationship between individual and group-level variation because they exhibit behavioral variation at multiple scales of organization. To explore how the genetic composition of groups affects collective behavior, we constructed groups of pharaoh ants (Monomorium pharaonis) from 33 genetically distinct colonies of known pedigree. The groups consisted of either all workers from the same single colony or workers from two genetically different colonies, and we assayed the exploration and aggression of the groups. We found that collective exploration, but not aggression, depended on the specific genotypic combination of group members, i.e., we found evidence for genotype-by-genotype epistasis for exploration. Group collective behavior did not depend on the pedigree relatedness between genotypes within groups. Overall, this study highlights that specific combinations of genotypes influence group-level phenotypes, emphasizing the importance of considering nonadditive effects of genotypic interactions between group members.
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Affiliation(s)
- Justin T Walsh
- Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Anna Garonski
- Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
| | - Claire Jackan
- Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
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