De novo transcriptome assembly and its annotation for the black ant Formica fusca

we report the public availability of transcriptome resources for the wood ant Formica fusca, sequenced at the larval stage. Very little is known about how larvae participate in colony communication, despites communication between individuals being involved in many aspects of social life, including mating, brood care, foraging and colony defence. The reference transcriptome of Formica fusca was obtained by RNA-sequencing to conduct a transcriptomic analysis looking at the effect of nutrition and social interaction on larval gene expression patterns. A total of 35,046 unigenes were generated with a median contig length of 528 bp and N50 of 1287 bp, using a combination of genome-guided and de novo transcriptome assembly. A comprehensive assembly methods, and annotation are provided. This reference transcriptome provides a valuable resource for further study of Formica fusca transcriptomic data and may serve as a useful resource for investigating functional gene activity in ant larvae in general.