Social insects are important models for social evolution and behavior. However, in many species, experimental control over important factors that regulate division of labor, such as genotype and age, is limited. Furthermore, most species have fixed queen and worker castes, making it difficult to establish causality between the molecular mechanisms that underlie reproductive division of labor, the hallmark of insect societies. Here we present the genome of the queenless clonal raider ant Cerapachys biroi, a powerful new study system that does not suffer from these constraints. Using cytology and RAD-seq, we show that C. biroi reproduces via automixis with central fusion and that heterozygosity is lost extremely slowly. As a consequence, nestmates are almost clonally related (r = 0.996). Workers in C. biroi colonies synchronously alternate between reproduction and brood care, and young workers eclose in synchronized cohorts. We show that genes associated with division of labor in other social insects are conserved in C. biroi and dynamically regulated during the colony cycle. With unparalleled experimental control over an individual’s genotype and age, and the ability to induce reproduction and brood care, C. biroi has great potential to illuminate the molecular regulation of division of labor.
Gene details for Cerapachys biroi chemosensory genes, UGTs and CYPs
Tab 1 contains details of all manually annotated chemosensory genes from Cerapachys biroi. Tab 2 contains all sequenced ant UDP glycosyltransferases, organised by clade (as described in supplemental data of Oxley et al.). Tab 3 contains all sequenced ant cytochrome P450 genes, organised by clade (as described in supplemental data of Oxley et al.).
UGT CYP and OR gene lists.xlsx
MUSCLE alignment of insect UDP glycosyltransferases
Alignment of UDP glycosyltransferases containing conserved signature motif (Mackenzie et al. Pharmacogenetics (1997) 7,255-269). Sequence includes motif and 100 amino acids up- and downstream. Details can be found in supplemental data: UDP Glycosyltransferases (UGTs) in Oxley et al.
UGTs_321.muscle.fasta
NEXUS file of maximum likelihood tree for insect UGTs
Maximum likelihood tree was constructed using Garli 2.0 (Poisson+G+I evolutionary model; best tree of five runs chosen), using the alignments provided in this repository.
UGTs_321.tre
MUSCLE alignment of insect cytochrome P450 genes
MUSCLE alignment of all sequenced ant CYPs and representative dipteran, hymenopteran and lepidopteran CYPs. All genes were manually checked for presence of conserved motifs (Nelson, D. Methods Mol. Biol. (2006) 320, 1-10). The alignment was further edited to remove the hypervariable non-conserved N-terminal up to (but not including) the N-terminal anchor sequence, as well as the region between the C-helix and I-helix. Further details can be found in Supplemental Data: Cytochrome P450 Genes of Oxley et al.
CYPs_573.muscle.fasta
NEXUS file of maximum likelihood tree for insect CYPs
Maximum likelihood phylogeny was constructed using Garli 2.0 (Poisson+G+I evolutionary model; best tree of two runs chosen) using protein alignment provided in this repository. For further details see Supplemental Data: Cytochrome p450 Genes in Oxley et al.
CYPs_573.tre