Abstract

The social ants, bees, wasps, and termites include some of the most ecologically-successful groups of animal species. Their dominance in most terrestrial environments is attributed to their social lifestyle, which enable their colonies to exploit environmental resources with remarkable efficiency. One key attribute of social insect colonies is the division of labour that emerges among the sterile workers, which represent the majority of colony members. Studies of the mechanisms that drive division of labour systems across diverse social species have provided fundamental insights into the developmental, physiological, molecular, and genomic processes that regulate sociality, and the possible genetic routes that may have led to its evolution from a solitary ancestor. Here we specifically discuss the conserved role of the foraging gene, which encodes a cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG). Originally identified as a behaviourally polymorphic gene that drives alternative foraging strategies in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, changes in foraging expression and kinase activity were later shown to play a key role in the division of labour in diverse social insect species as well. In particular, foraging appears to regulate worker transitions between behavioural tasks and specific behavioural traits associated with morphological castes. Although the specific neuroethological role of foraging in the insect brain remains mostly unknown, studies in genetically tractable insect species indicate that PKG signalling plays a conserved role in the neuronal plasticity of sensory, cognitive and motor functions, which underlie behaviours relevant to division of labour, including appetitive learning, aggression, stress response, phototaxis, and the response to pheromones.

摘要

社会蚂蚁、蜜蜂、黄蜂和白蚁包括一些在生态上最成功的动物物种群体。他们在大多数陆地环境中的主导地位归因于他们的社会生活方式，这使他们的殖民地能够以惊人的效率开发环境资源。社会昆虫群落的一个关键属性是不育工人之间出现的分工，他们代表了大多数群体成员。对推动不同社会物种分工系统的机制的研究为调节社会性的发育、生理、分子和基因组过程以及可能导致其从孤独祖先进化的可能遗传途径提供了基本见解。在这里，我们专门讨论的守恒作用觅食基因，它编码 cGMP 依赖性蛋白激酶 (PKG)。最初被确定为驱动果蝇黑腹果蝇替代觅食策略的行为多态性基因，觅食表达和激酶活性的变化后来被证明在不同社会昆虫物种的分工中发挥关键作用。特别是，觅食似乎可以调节行为任务和与形态种姓相关的特定行为特征之间的工人转换。虽然觅食的特定神经行为学作用 在昆虫大脑中仍然大部分未知，对遗传易处理的昆虫物种的研究表明，PKG 信号在感觉、认知和运动功能的神经元可塑性中起着保守的作用，这是与分工相关的行为的基础，包括食欲学习、攻击性、压力反应、趋光性和对信息素的反应。