Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior

Social insects like ants, termites, and honeybees have evolved some of the most complex cooperative societies on Earth, and genomics is now revealing the molecular machinery behind these arrangements — from the genes that determine whether a bee becomes a worker or a queen, to the microbial communities living in insect guts that shape colony health and ecological function. Sequencing the genomes of these species has made it possible to trace how eusociality — a form of social organization where individuals sacrifice personal reproduction to support a shared colony — evolved independently across different lineages, and to identify the genetic signatures common to that transition. A central open question is how colonies coordinate division of labor at the molecular level: what regulates caste identity, and how do environmental cues interact with gene expression to produce radically different phenotypes from nearly identical genomes? Researchers are also mapping the symbiotic microbiota of social insect colonies to understand how resident bacteria and fungi influence immunity, nutrition, and the insects' broader roles as pollinators, decomposers, and ecosystem engineers.

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Keywords

Social InsectsGenomicsSymbiosisAntsTermitesHoneybees