Molecular Basis of Caste Determination in Polistes metricus

We investigated environmental determinants of caste differences in paper wasps, specifically the effects of differential nutrition. We found that nutritional restriction only partially biased wasp gene expression patterns toward being worker caste-like, which highlights the complex and multifactorial nature of environmental effects on the gene expression patterns underlying plastic phenotypes PRJNA242774; We sequenced mRNA from 16 individual 5th instar larval Polistes metricus heads from 4 groups: worker-reared (n=4), foundress-reared (n=4), restricted nutrition (n=4), and ad libitum (n=4).