DISSERTATION RESEARCH: The Evolutionary Genomics of Facultative Social Behavior in a Tropical Sweat Bee

摘要PI Nonacs CoPI韦恩提案号IOS-0808256热带甜蜂社会行为的进化基因组学从达尔文时代起，人们就一直在寻找利他主义的进化解释，但许多研究人员仍然没有达成一致。 在群居昆虫群体中，合作是最极端的，其中一个或几个成员（女王）繁殖，大多数群体成员（工人）放弃繁殖，专门从事其他任务。 对社会进化的一种解释是基于社会性昆虫工作者行为和母性生殖特征之间的相似性。 工人种姓可能起源于一个孤独的祖先时，一个突变的女性表现出母性行为之前分散。 这将导致以兄弟姐妹为导向，而不是以后代为导向的护理。 如果这一理论是正确的，那么在独居祖先的整个生殖周期中活跃的基因，在社会后代的工蜂和蚁后中应该受到不同的调节。 一个理想的测试这一假设需要知识的基因表达模式的代表社会和祖先的孤独状态。 幸运的是，在Megalopta genalis蜜蜂中也存在类似的情况，在同一种群中同时发现了社会和孤独的个体。 为了分析差异基因表达，使用定制的微阵列（载玻片含有对应于M.大脑（genalis brain）将被创建。 因为M. genalis是灵活的，季节性的，这一建议代表了一个更好的控制和更多的信息研究比任何物种研究的日期。 研究结果将突出进化压力对真社会性起源的一贯重要性，并在理解社会环境如何影响生殖行为方面发挥变革性作用。 工作的更广泛影响：在该提案中创建的新的大规模基因组资源将公开提供，并对许多科学学科的其他研究人员有用。 拟议的实验室工作将通过正在进行的加州大学洛杉矶分校旨在增加少数民族参与科学研究的计划，为本科生提供尖端分子技术的培训。

ABSTRACT PI Nonacs CoPI Wayne Proposal #IOS-0808256THE EVOLUTIONARY GENOMICS OF FACULTATIVE SOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN A TROPICAL SWEAT BEEEvolutionary explanations for altruism have been sought since the time of Darwin, and are still not agreed upon by many researchers. Cooperation is most extreme within social insect colonies, in which one or a few members (queens) reproduce, and most colony members (workers) forego reproduction to specialize in other tasks. One explanation for social evolution is based on the similarities between social insect worker behavior and maternal reproductive traits. The worker caste may have originated in a solitary ancestor when a mutant female exhibited maternal behavior prior to dispersal. This would have resulted in sibling-directed, instead of offspring-directed care. If this theory is correct, genes active throughout the reproductive cycle of solitary ancestors should be differentially regulated in workers and queens of social descendants. An ideal test of this hypothesis requires knowledge of gene expression patterns in representatives of the social and ancestral solitary state. Fortunately an analogous condition exists in Megalopta genalis bees, where both social and solitary individuals are found simultaneously within the same population. To analyze differential gene expression, a custom microarray, (a slide containing probes corresponding to approximately 5,000 genes expressed in the M. genalis brain) will be created. Because sociality in M. genalis is flexible and aseasonal, this proposal represents a better controlled and more informative study than is possible in any species studied to date. The results will highlight evolutionary pressures consistently important to the origin of eusociality, and have a transformative role in understanding how the social environment affects reproductive behavior. Broader impacts of the work: The new large-scale genomic resource created within this proposal will be publicly available, and useful to other researchers from many scientific disciplines. The proposed laboratory work will provide training in cutting edge molecular techniques to undergraduate students through an ongoing UCLA program aimed at increasing minority participation in scientific research.