ArticleGenome biology and evolution2017
Variation in DNA Methylation Is Not Consistently Reflected by Sociality in Hymenoptera.
Article in Genome biology and evolution, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 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
25 citing papers in PubMed, 60 citations in OpenAlex.
- Transcription Factor Evolution Associated with Social Transitions in Blattodea.Journal of molecular evolution · 2026Article
- A Chromosome-Level Genome Assembly and Resequencing Data Reveal Low DNA Methylation and Reduced Diversity in the Solitary Bee Pollinator Osmia cornuta.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- The Molecular Substrates of Insect Eusociality.Annual review of genetics · 2024Review
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- Article
- Highly Contiguous Genome Assemblies of the Guinea Paper Wasp (Polistes exclamans) and Mischocyttarus mexicanus.Genome biology and evolution · 2022Article
- A molecular toolkit for superorganisms.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2021Review
- The role of epigenetics, particularly DNA methylation, in the evolution of caste in insect societies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2021Review
- Gene expression and epigenetics reveal species-specific mechanisms acting upon common molecular pathways in the evolution of task division in bees.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- DNA methylation differs extensively between strains of the same geographical origin and changes with age in Daphnia magna.Epigenetics & chromatin · 2021Article
- Intergenerational transfer of DNA methylation marks in the honey bee.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- High-Quality Assemblies for Three Invasive Social Wasps from theG3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2020Article
- Social modularity: conserved genes and regulatory elements underlie caste-antecedent behavioural states in an incipiently social bee.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- DNA Methylation: Shared and Divergent Features across Eukaryotes.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2019Review
- Unique DNA Methylation Profiles Are Associated with cis-Variation in Honey Bees.Genome biology and evolution · 2019Article
- The effects of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid on gene expression and DNA methylation in the buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Diversity of cytosine methylation across the fungal tree of life.Nature ecology & evolution · 2019Article
- Changes of gene expression but not cytosine methylation are associated with male parental care reflecting behavioural state, social context and individual flexibility.The Journal of experimental biology · 2019Article
- Dnmt1 is essential for egg production and embryo viability in the large milkweed bug, Oncopeltus fasciatus.Epigenetics & chromatin · 2019Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 7 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Changes in gene regulation that underlie phenotypic evolution can be encoded directly in the DNA sequence or mediated by chromatin modifications such as DNA methylation. It has been hypothesized that the evolution of eusocial division of labor is associated with enhanced gene regulatory potential, which may include expansions in DNA methylation in the genomes of Hymenoptera (bees, ants, wasps, and sawflies). Recently, this hypothesis garnered support from analyses of a commonly used metric to estimate DNA methylation in silico, CpG content. Here, we test this hypothesis using direct, nucleotide-level measures of DNA methylation across nine species of Hymenoptera. In doing so, we generated new DNA methylomes for three species of interest, including one solitary and one facultatively eusocial halictid bee and a sawfly. We demonstrate that the strength of correlation between CpG content and DNA methylation varies widely among hymenopteran taxa, highlighting shortcomings in the utility of CpG content as a proxy for DNA methylation in comparative studies of taxa with sparse DNA methylomes. We observed strikingly high levels of DNA methylation in the sawfly relative to other investigated hymenopterans. Analyses of molecular evolution suggest the relatively distinct sawfly DNA methylome may be associated with positive selection on functional DNMT3 domains. Sawflies are an outgroup to all ants, bees, and wasps, and no sawfly species are eusocial. We find no evidence that either global expansions or variation within individual ortholog groups in DNA methylation are consistently associated with the evolution of social behavior.
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