All of life is social, from genes cooperating to form organisms, to animals cooperating to form societies. Omic approaches offer exceptional opportunities to solve major outstanding problems in the study of how sociality evolves. First, omics can be used to clarify the extent and form of sociality in natural populations. This is especially useful in species where it is difficult to study social traits in natural populations, such as bacteria and other microbes. Second, omics can be used to examine the consequences of sociality for genome evolution and gene expression. This is especially useful in cases where there is clear variation in the level of sociality, such as the social insects. Major tasks for the future are to apply these approaches to a wider range of non-model organisms, and to move from exploratory analyses to the testing of evolutionary theory.

从合作形成有机体的基因到合作形成社会的动物，整个生命都是社会性的。在社会性如何发展的研究中，Omic方法提供了解决重大悬而未决问题的绝好机会。首先，可以使用组学来阐明自然人群中社会性的程度和形式。这在难以研究自然种群的社会特征（例如细菌和其他微生物）的物种中特别有用。其次，组学可以用来检查社交性对基因组进化和基因表达的影响。这在社交性程度明显不同的情况下（例如社交昆虫）特别有用。未来的主要任务是将这些方法应用于更广泛的非模式生物，