Abstract
Communication and nutrition are major drivers of fitness in ants. While communication is paramount to colony cohesion, nutrition is decisive in regulating reproductive division of labor among colony members. However, neither of these has been studied from a molecular perspective in developing individuals. Here, we report the availability of the first transcriptome resources for larvae of the ant Formica fusca, a species with excellent discrimination abilities and thus the potential to become a model system for studying molecular mechanisms of communication. We generated a comprehensive, high-coverage RNA-seq data set using Illumina RNA-seq technology by sequencing 24 individual 1st - 2nd instar larvae collected from four experimental groups (6 samples per treatment, 49 million mean reads per sample, coverage between 194–253×). A total of 24,765 unigenes were generated using a combination of genome-guided and de novo transcriptome assembly. A comprehensive assembly pipeline and annotation lists are provided. This dataset adds valuable transcriptomic resources for further study of developmental gene expression, transcriptional regulation and functional gene activity in ant larvae.
Highlights
Background & SummaryThe evolution of insect societies represents a major evolutionary transition comparable to the evolution of multicellular organisms from free-living cells[1]
Insect societies consist of individual somatic units and individual germ-line units that together form a highly integrated system
Conceptual advances in biology, sparked by seminal work on the role of development in evolution[5], are causing this focus to shift toward developing individuals
Summary
The evolution of insect societies represents a major evolutionary transition comparable to the evolution of multicellular organisms from free-living cells[1]. In contrast to multicellular organisms, insect societies can be broken down into their separate components (i.e. individuals), which can be studied and manipulated in isolation. While eggs and pupae do not participate directly in colony life, larvae are actively engaged in crucial colony-level processes (e.g. food processing) and represent the developmental stage during which growth and determination of reproductive caste, i.e. queen or worker caste, occurs. While it seems clear that nutrition is the most important factor regulating reproductive division of labor via its effects on queen-worker caste determination in ants[4,17], the molecular basis of nutritional signalling has not been studied in individual larvae.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
