When, why and how does sociality and sex affect ageing and life history evolution in termites?

群居昆虫有望成为洞察生活史、进化，尤其是衰老的新生模型。在白蚁、蚂蚁或蜜蜂的群体中，尽管拥有相同的遗传背景，但不同的个体有着不同的生活史。此外，女王显然已经克服了繁殖力和长寿之间几乎普遍存在的生活史权衡。它们是繁殖能力最强、寿命最长的昆虫之一，甚至可以延长寿命。在最近的一个项目中，我们分别通过建模和基因表达方法研究了社会性为什么以及如何改变白蚁的繁殖力/寿命权衡和衰老。虽然我们即将提供为什么这个问题的答案，但我们对相关机制的接近受到了新冠肺炎的强烈影响。我们的目标是生成白蚁物种的年轻和老年女王和工作人员的转录本，以及白蚁姐妹分类群的一个代表--木头白蚁，涵盖具有不同社会性程度的整个白蚁系统发育。然而，新冠肺炎的限制限制了物种的采样，这使得采样主要集中在社会复杂性较低的物种上。在这项新提案的框架内，我们希望补充缺失的物种，以充分利用我们现有的数据集，并回答以下问题：繁殖力/寿命权衡和老龄化的机制如何随着社会性程度的变化而变化(目标1)。我们希望通过增加性别对衰老的影响来补充这一目标，到目前为止，这一点在社会昆虫研究中基本上被忽视了。因此，在目标2中，我们旨在通过解决何时、为什么以及如何发生性别特定衰老的问题来研究白蚁繁殖中的性别特定衰老。为了回答我们的问题，我们还将利用新的机器学习方法，这有助于跨物种的模式检测。我们的项目将为生命历史、进化和长寿背后的机制等基本问题提供新的见解。

Social insects are promising nascent models to gain insights into life history evolution and especially ageing. Within a colony of termites, ants or honeybees, different individuals have different life histories despite sharing the same genetic background. Furthermore, queens have apparently overcome the almost universal life history trade-off between fecundity and longevity. They are among the most fertile and most long-lived insects with reproduction even increasing lifespan. In a recent project, we studied why and how sociality changes the fecundity/longevity trade-off and ageing in termites by using modelling and gene expression approaches, respectively. While we are close to providing answers to the why question, our proximate approach about the mechanisms was strongly affected by COVID-19. We aimed to generate transcriptomes of young and old queens and workers of termite species and one representative of the termites’ sister taxon, the woodroaches, covering the whole termite phylogeny with different degrees of sociality. Yet, COVID-19 restrictions limited sampling of species, which necessitated concentration mainly on species of low social complexity. Within the framework of this new proposal, we want to supplement the missing species to make full use of our available data sets and answer the question how the mechanisms underlying the fecundity/longevity trade-off and ageing change with degree of sociality (Objective 1). We want to complement this objective by adding the effect of sex on ageing, which has been largely ignored in social insect studies so far. Thus, in Objective 2, we aim to study sex-specific ageing in termite reproductives by addressing the question when, why, and how does sex-specific ageing occur. To answer our questions, we will also make use of novel machine learning approaches, which facilitate pattern detection across species. Our project will provide new insights into fundamental questions of life history evolution and mechanisms underlying a long lifespan.