ArticleCommunications biology2020
Gene expression variation in the brains of harvester ant foragers is associated with collective behavior.
Article in Communications biology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Flexibility in Gene Coexpression at Developmental and Evolutionary Timescales.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- The role of dopamine in foraging decisions in social insects.Frontiers in insect science · 2025Review
- The life history of harvester ant colonies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Article
- Harvester ant colonies differ in collective behavioural plasticity to regulate water loss.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Differential Gene Expression Correlates with Behavioural Polymorphism during Collective Behaviour in Cockroaches.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Colony specificity and starvation-driven changes in activity patterns of the red ant Myrmica rubra.PloS one · 2022Article
- The Consistency of Gastropod Identified Neurons Distinguishes Intra-Individual Plasticity From Inter-Individual Variability in Neural Circuits.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Review
- Movement, Encounter Rate, and Collective Behavior in Ant Colonies.Annals of the Entomological Society of America · 2021Article
- Active Inferants: An Active Inference Framework for Ant Colony Behavior.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
Natural selection on collective behavior acts on variation among colonies in behavior that is associated with reproductive success. In the red harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex barbatus), variation among colonies in the collective regulation of foraging in response to humidity is associated with colony reproductive success. We used RNA-seq to examine gene expression in the brains of foragers in a natural setting. We find that colonies differ in the expression of neurophysiologically-relevant genes in forager brains, and a fraction of these gene expression differences are associated with two colony traits: sensitivity of foraging activity to humidity, and forager brain dopamine to serotonin ratio. Loci that were correlated with colony behavioral differences were enriched in neurotransmitter receptor signaling & metabolic functions, tended to be more central to coexpression networks, and are evolving under higher protein-coding sequence constraint. Natural selection may shape colony foraging behavior through variation in gene expression.
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