Title: | Pheromonal Regulation of the Reproductive Division of Labor in Social Insects |
Author(s): | Ge J; Ge Z; Zhu D; Wang X; |
Address: | "State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. CAS Center for Excellence in Biotic Interactions, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China" |
ISSN/ISBN: | 2296-634X (Print) 2296-634X (Electronic) 2296-634X (Linking) |
Abstract: | "The reproductive altruism in social insects is an evolutionary enigma that has been puzzling scientists starting from Darwin. Unraveling how reproductive skew emerges and maintains is crucial to understand the reproductive altruism involved in the consequent division of labor. The regulation of adult worker reproduction involves conspecific inhibitory signals, which are thought to be chemical signals by numerous studies. Despite the primary identification of few chemical ligands, the action modes of primer pheromones that regulate reproduction and their molecular causes and effects remain challenging. Here, these questions were elucidated by comprehensively reviewing recent advances. The coordination with other modalities of queen pheromones (QPs) and its context-dependent manner to suppress worker reproduction were discussed under the vast variation and plasticity of reproduction during colony development and across taxa. In addition to the effect of QPs, special attention was paid to recent studies revealing the regulatory effect of brood pheromones. Considering the correlation between pheromone and hormone, this study focused on the production and perception of pheromones under the endocrine control and highlighted the pivotal roles of nutrition-related pathways. The novel chemicals and gene pathways discovered by recent works provide new insights into the understanding of social regulation of reproductive division of labor in insects" |
Keywords: | caste division of labor juvenile hormone olfactory receptor queen pheromone; |
Notes: | "PubMed-not-MEDLINEGe, Jin Ge, Zhuxi Zhu, Dan Wang, Xianhui eng Review Switzerland 2020/09/26 Front Cell Dev Biol. 2020 Aug 20; 8:837. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2020.00837. eCollection 2020" |