Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior

Social insects such as ants, termites, and honeybees have evolved some of the most sophisticated cooperative societies on Earth, and genomics is now revealing the molecular machinery that makes this possible — from the genes that determine whether an individual becomes a worker or a queen, to the microbial communities living within their bodies that shape colony health and behavior. Researchers in this area sequence and compare insect genomes to identify the genetic signatures of eusociality, the condition in which most individuals forgo reproduction to support a small number of reproductive members, asking how such a system evolves and what keeps it stable. A central open question is how division of labor is encoded and regulated: whether it arises from fixed genetic differences between castes, flexible gene expression triggered by environment and social context, or some combination of both. Alongside this, the microbiota carried by these insects — bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms residing in the gut and nest — are increasingly recognized as active participants in colony function, raising questions about how these symbioses co-evolved with their hosts and how disrupting them, through pesticides or habitat change, affects colony survival.

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Keywords

Social InsectsGenomicsSymbiosisAntsTermitesHoneybees