ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2018
Phylogenomic Evidence Overturns Current Conceptions of Social Evolution in Wasps (Vespidae).
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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33 citing papers in PubMed.
- Haplodiploidy and the evolution of eusociality: A long-standing question is finally resolved.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Review
- Fraternal cooperation of hierarchical cancer parallels metazoan multicellularity and eusociality.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Phylogenetic and Morphological Analysis of Wing Base Articulation in Vespidae (Hymenoptera): A Cladistic Approach.Insects · 2025Article
- Role specialization and reproductive division of labour at the origin of eusociality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Review
- The Molecular Substrates of Insect Eusociality.Annual review of genetics · 2024Review
- Article
- The mitochondrial genome of a social wasp,Mitochondrial DNA. Part B, Resources · 2024Article
- Characterization of Complete Mitochondrial Genome and Phylogenetic Analysis of a Nocturnal Wasps-Current issues in molecular biology · 2023Article
- Phylogenomics of weevils revisited: data curation and modelling compositional heterogeneity.Biology letters · 2023Article
- Honey bees and social wasps reach convergent architectural solutions to nest-building problems.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Mutualistic Relationships between Microorganisms and Eusocial Wasps (Hymenoptera, Vespidae).Microorganisms · 2023Review
- Article
- Positive selection in cytochrome P450 genes is associated with gonad phenotype and mating strategy in social bees.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Molecular patterns and processes in evolving sociality: lessons from insects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Article
- Social complexity, life-history and lineage influence the molecular basis of castes in vespid wasps.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Annotated Catalog of Vespid Hosts (Hymenoptera: Vespidae) of Tachinidae (Diptera), with Description of a New Species ofZoological studies · 2023Article
- Next-Generation Sequencing of Four Mitochondrial Genomes ofAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
The hypothesis that eusociality originated once in Vespidae has shaped interpretation of social evolution for decades and has driven the supposition that preimaginal morphophysiological differences between castes were absent at the outset of eusociality. Many researchers also consider casteless nest-sharing an antecedent to eusociality. Together, these ideas endorse a stepwise progression of social evolution in wasps (solitary → casteless nest-sharing → eusociality with rudimentary behavioral castes → eusociality with preimaginal caste-biasing (PCB) → morphologically differentiated castes). Here, we infer the phylogeny of Vespidae using sequence data generated via anchored hybrid enrichment from 378 loci across 136 vespid species and perform ancestral state reconstructions to test whether rudimentary and monomorphic castes characterized the initial stages of eusocial evolution. Our results reject the single origin of eusociality hypothesis, contest the supposition that eusociality emerged from a casteless nest-sharing ancestor, and suggest that eusociality in Polistinae + Vespinae began with castes having morphological differences. An abrupt appearance of castes with ontogenetically established morphophysiological differences conflicts with the current conception of stepwise social evolution and suggests that the climb up the ladder of sociality does not occur through sequential mutation. Phenotypic plasticity and standing genetic variation could explain how cooperative brood care evolved in concert with nest-sharing and how morphologically dissimilar castes arose without a rudimentary intermediate. Furthermore, PCB at the outset of eusociality implicates a subsocial route to eusociality in Polistinae + Vespinae, emphasizing the role of mother-daughter interactions and subfertility (i.e. the cost component of kin selection) in the origin of workers.
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