ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2015
Transcriptomic Signatures Mirror the Lack of the Fecundity/Longevity Trade-Off in Ant Queens.
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- Unmated Queens Show Worker-Like Behaviour and Gene Expression in Polygynous Colonies of the Ant Stigmatomma pallipes.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Age, caste, and social context shape ovarian morphology and transcriptomic profiles in red harvester ants.npj aging · 2025Article
- The pace and shape of ant ageing.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Worker Survival and Egg Production-But Not Transcriptional Activity-Respond to Queen Number in the Highly Polygynous, Invasive Ant Tapinoma magnum.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Common viral infections inhibit egg laying in honey bee queens and are linked to premature supersedure.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Heterochronic shift in gene expression leads to ontogenetic morphological divergence between two closely related polyploid species.iScience · 2024Article
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- TheFrontiers in molecular biosciences · 2022Article
- Biomarkers in a socially exchanged /fluid reflect colony maturity, behavior, and distributed metabolism.eLife · 2021Article
- Gene Coexpression Network Reveals Highly Conserved, Well-Regulated Anti-Ageing Mechanisms in Old Ant Queens.Genome biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Reproductive activation in honeybee (Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Molecular regulation of lifespan extension in fertile ant workers.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Article
- The plasticity of lifespan in social insects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Experimental increase in fecundity causes upregulation of fecundity and body maintenance genes in the fat body of ant queens.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Long-lived Temnothorax ant queens switch from investment in immunity to antioxidant production with age.Scientific reports · 2019Article
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- Horizons in the evolution of aging.BMC biology · 2018Review
- A lipocalin protein, Neural Lazarillo, is key to social interactions that promote termite soldier differentiation.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Simple Comparative Analyses of Differentially Expressed Gene Lists May Overestimate Gene Overlap.Journal of computational biology : a journal of computational molecular cell biology · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Life-history theory predicts a trade-off between reproductive investment and self-maintenance. The negative association between fertility and longevity found throughout multicellular organisms supports this prediction. As an important exception, the reproductives of many eusocial insects (ants, bees, and termites) are simultaneously very long-lived and highly fertile. Here, we examine the proximate basis for this exceptional relationship by comparing whole-body transcriptomes of differently aged queens of the ant Cardiocondyla obscurior. We show that the sets of genes differentially expressed with age significantly overlap with age-related expression changes previously found in female Drosophila melanogaster. We identified several developmental processes, such as the generation of neurons, as common signatures of aging. More generally, however, gene expression in ant queens and flies changes with age mainly in opposite directions. In contrast to flies, reproduction-associated genes were upregulated and genes associated with metabolic processes and muscle contraction were downregulated in old relative to young ant queens. Furthermore, we searched for putative C. obscurior longevity candidates associated with the previously reported lifespan-prolonging effect of mating by comparing the transcriptomes of queens that differed in mating and reproductive status. We found 21 genes, including the putative aging candidate NLaz (an insect homolog of APOD), which were consistently more highly expressed in short-lived, unmated queens than in long-lived, mated queens. Our study provides clear evidence that the alternative regulation of conserved molecular pathways that mediate the interplay among mating, egg laying, and aging underlies the lack of the fecundity/longevity trade-off in ant queens.
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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.