ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Population genomics of the honey bee reveals strong signatures of positive selection on worker traits.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 97 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
97 citing papers in PubMed.
- Omics Insights Into the Effects of Highbush Blueberry and Cranberry Crop Agroecosystems on Honey Bee Health and Physiology.Proteomics · 2026Article
- The life history of recessive deleterious alleles as seen through the eyes of a honey bee (Apis mellifera).Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Population Genetic Study ofEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Eye can see clearly now: Identifying the locus associated with a white-eye mutation in honey bees (Apis mellifera).Insect molecular biology · 2026Article
- The diversity of insecticide target site mutations in Apis mellifera.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- The fru gene specifies male cooperative behaviors in honeybee colonies.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Signals of Ancestry-Specific Selection in Gentle Africanized Honey Bees.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Genome-Wide Association Studies of Key Traits inGenes · 2025Article
- A Genome-Wide Analysis of Structure and Evolution in Irish and British Populations ofEvolutionary applications · 2025Article
- Genomic Landscape of High-Altitude Adaptation in East African Mountain Honey Bees (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Multi-Omic Analysis Reveals Population Differentiation and Signatures of Social Evolution in Tetragonula Stingless Bees.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Exploring the genetics of social behaviour in C. calcarata.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Inferring Long-Term and Short-Term Determinants of Genetic Diversity in Honey Bees: Beekeeping Impact and Conservation Strategies.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Accurate Detection ofEcology and evolution · 2024Article
- Dedicated developmental programing for group-supporting behaviors in eusocial honeybees.Science advances · 2024Article
- HBeeID: a molecular tool that identifies honey bee subspecies from different geographic populations.BMC bioinformatics · 2024Article
- Molecular signatures of alternative reproductive strategies in a facultatively social hover wasp.Molecular ecology · 2024Article
- Seasonal variation in defense behavior in European and scutellata-hybrid honey bees (Apis mellifera) in Southern California.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The impact of geography and climate on the population structure and local adaptation in a wild bee.Evolutionary applications · 2023Article
- Effects of local domestication warrant attention in honey bee population genetics.Science advances · 2023Article
37 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Most theories used to explain the evolution of eusociality rest upon two key assumptions: mutations affecting the phenotype of sterile workers evolve by positive selection if the resulting traits benefit fertile kin, and that worker traits provide the primary mechanism allowing social insects to adapt to their environment. Despite the common view that positive selection drives phenotypic evolution of workers, we know very little about the prevalence of positive selection acting on the genomes of eusocial insects. We mapped the footprints of positive selection in Apis mellifera through analysis of 40 individual genomes, allowing us to identify thousands of genes and regulatory sequences with signatures of adaptive evolution over multiple timescales. We found Apoidea- and Apis-specific genes to be enriched for signatures of positive selection, indicating that novel genes play a disproportionately large role in adaptive evolution of eusocial insects. Worker-biased proteins have higher signatures of adaptive evolution relative to queen-biased proteins, supporting the view that worker traits are key to adaptation. We also found genes regulating worker division of labor to be enriched for signs of positive selection. Finally, genes associated with worker behavior based on analysis of brain gene expression were highly enriched for adaptive protein and cis-regulatory evolution. Our study highlights the significant contribution of worker phenotypes to adaptive evolution in social insects, and provides a wealth of knowledge on the loci that influence fitness in honey bees.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.