Apis mellifera Transcriptome or Gene expression. Apis mellifera

Social insects are characterised by the division of labour. Queens usually dominate reproduction, whereas workers fulfil non-reproductive age-dependent tasks to maintain the colony. Although workers are typically sterile, they can activate their ovaries to produce their own offspring. In the extreme, worker reproduction can turn into social parasitism as in Apis mellifera capensis. These intraspecific parasites occupy a host colony, kill the resident queen and take over the reproductive monopoly. Because they exhibit a queenlike behaviour and are also treated like queens by the fellow workers, they are so-called “pseudoqueens”. Here we compare the development of parasitic pseudoqueens and social workers at different time points using fat body transcriptome data. Two complementary analysis methods – a principal component analysis and a time course analysis – led to the identification of a core set of genes involved in the transition from a social worker into a highly fecund parasitic pseudoqueen. Comparing our results on pseudoqueens with gene expression data of honeybee queens revealed many similarities. In addition, there was a set of specific transcriptomic changes in the parasitic pseudoqueens that differed from both, queens and social workers, which may be typical for the development of the social parasitism in A. m. capensis.