Division of labour—individuals specializing in different activities—features prominently in the
spectacular success of the social insects. Until recently, genetic and genomic analyses of …

Highlights•The IIS is the core pathway underlying caste determination.•The pathway can be
regulated by genes, nutrition, and other pathways.•Epigenetics mechanisms have been …

Recent evidence for genetic effects on royal and worker caste differentiation from diverse
social insect taxa has put an end to the view that these phenotypes stem solely from a …

An area of great interest in evolutionary genomics is whether convergently evolved traits are
the result of convergent molecular mechanisms. The presence of queen and worker castes …

We report the draft genome sequence of the red harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex barbatus.
The genome was sequenced using 454 pyrosequencing, and the current assembly and …

Understanding the molecular basis of how behavioural states are established, maintained
and altered by environmental cues is an area of considerable and growing interest …

Female ants display a wide variety of morphological castes, including workers, soldiers,
ergatoid (worker-like) queens and queens. Alternative caste development within a species …

Body size is a key life-history trait influencing all aspects of an organism's biology. Ants
provide an interesting model for examining body-size variation because of the high degree …

Social insects have the highest rates of meiotic recombination among Metazoa, but there is
considerable variation within the Hymenoptera. We synthesize the literature to investigate …

Our understanding of insect societies is rapidly expanding due to an emphasis on
integrative approaches. Emerging tools enabling the molecular dissection of social …