ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Transcriptomics and neuroanatomy of the clonal raider ant implicate an expanded clade of odorant receptors in chemical communication.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 79 papers.
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79 citing papers in PubMed, 165 citations in OpenAlex.
- Transposable elements as evolutionary catalysts of ant macrodiversity.Science advances · 2026Article
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- Adaptive evolution of odorant receptors is associated with elaborations of social organization in ants.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Expansion of the geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate synthase gene family underlies the evolution of terpenoid biosynthesis in termites.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Pheromone-Mediated Social Organization and Pest Management of the Red Imported Fire Ant,Insects · 2026Review
- Distribution and efficacy of ingested dsRNA targeting tissue-specific genes in the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile.PloS one · 2026Article
- Sensitivity to cuticular hydrocarbons across the odorant receptor family in the Indian jumping ant,Frontiers in insect science · 2026Article
- Identification of two odorant receptors tuned to alarm pheromone compounds in the honey bee Apis mellifera.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Transcriptional interference gates monogenic odorant receptor expression in ants.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Article
- Caste- and environment-associated differential expression of olfactory receptors in pest ants.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Transcriptional Interference Gates Monogenic Odorant Receptor Expression in Ants.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Transcriptome Screening and Identification of Chemosensory Genes in the Goji Berry Psyllid,Biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Ancestral complexity and constrained diversification of the ant olfactory system.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Hymenopteran-specific TRPA channel from the Texas leaf cutter ant (Atta texana) is heat and cold activated and expression correlates with environmental temperature.Insect science · 2025Article
- Evolution of Sensory Receptors.Annual review of cell and developmental biology · 2024Review
- Evolution of odorant receptor repertoires across Hymenoptera is not linked to the evolution of eusociality.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Sensory evidence for complex communication and advanced sociality in early ants.Science advances · 2024Article
- Identification of chemosensory genes in the stingless bee Tetragonisca fiebrigi.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2024Article
19 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
A major aim of sociogenomic research is to uncover common principles in the molecular evolution of sociality. This endeavor has been hampered by the small number of specific genes currently known to function in social behavior. Here we provide several lines of evidence suggesting that ants have evolved a large and novel clade of odorant receptor (OR) genes to perceive hydrocarbon-based pheromones, arguably the most important signals in ant communication. This genomic expansion is also mirrored in the ant brain via a corresponding expansion of a specific cluster of glomeruli in the antennal lobe. We show that in the clonal raider ant, hydrocarbon-sensitive basiconic sensilla are found only on the ventral surface of the female antennal club. Correspondingly, nearly all genes in a clade of 180 ORs within the 9-exon subfamily of ORs are expressed exclusively in females and are highly enriched in expression in the ventral half of the antennal club. Furthermore, we found that across species and sexes, the number of 9-exon ORs expressed in antennae is tightly correlated with the number of glomeruli in the antennal lobe region innervated by odorant receptor neurons from basiconic sensilla. Evolutionary analyses show that this clade underwent a striking gene expansion in the ancestors of all ants and slower but continued expansion in extant ant lineages. This evidence suggests that ants have evolved a large clade of genes to support pheromone perception and that gene duplications have played an important role in the molecular evolution of ant communication.
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