Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York 10016, USA.
Department of Biology, New York University, New York, New York 10003, USA.
Genes Dev. 2021 Mar 1;35(5-6):410-424. doi: 10.1101/gad.343699.120. Epub 2021 Feb 18.
Ant societies show a division of labor in which a queen is in charge of reproduction while nonreproductive workers maintain the colony. In , workers retain reproductive ability, inhibited by the queen pheromones. Following the queen loss, the colony undergoes social unrest with an antennal dueling tournament. Most workers quickly abandon the tournament while a few workers continue the dueling for months and become gamergates (pseudoqueens). However, the temporal dynamics of the social behavior and molecular mechanisms underlining the caste transition and social dominance remain unclear. By tracking behaviors, we show that the gamergate fate is accurately determined 3 d after initiation of the tournament. To identify genetic factors responsible for this commitment, we compared transcriptomes of different tissues between dueling and nondueling workers. We found that juvenile hormone is globally repressed, whereas ecdysone biosynthesis in the ovary is increased in gamergates. We show that molecular changes in the brain serve as earliest caste predictors compared with other tissues. Thus, behavioral and molecular data indicate that despite the prolonged social upheaval, the gamergate fate is rapidly established, suggesting a robust re-establishment of social structure.
蚂蚁社会表现出一种分工，其中蚁后负责繁殖，而非生殖工蚁则维持蚁群。在某些蚂蚁中，工蚁保留生殖能力，但受到蚁后信息素的抑制。在蚁后失去后，蚁群会经历社会动荡，出现触角决斗比赛。大多数工蚁很快放弃了比赛，而少数工蚁会继续决斗几个月，成为生殖雌蚁（假蚁后）。然而，社会行为的时间动态和支配地位的分子机制仍然不清楚。通过跟踪行为，我们表明生殖雌蚁的命运在比赛开始后 3 天就可以准确确定。为了确定负责这种转变的遗传因素，我们比较了决斗和非决斗工蚁的不同组织的转录组。我们发现，在生殖雌蚁中，保幼激素被全局抑制，而卵巢中的蜕皮激素生物合成增加。我们还发现，与其他组织相比，大脑中的分子变化可以作为最早的蚁后预测因子。因此，行为和分子数据表明，尽管经历了长时间的社会动荡，生殖雌蚁的命运还是迅速确定的，这表明社会结构可以迅速重建。
