Epigenomic changes of RNA methylation and parent-specific gene expression underlying aggression in reciprocally crossed honey bees

Social behavior in insects is a complex. How epigenetic marks control behavior via paternal or maternal inheritance is still unknown. The kinship theory of intragenomic conflict predicts that because an individual's alleles differ in probabilities of being present among relatives, selection could act on them differently and facilitate parent specific gene expression (PSGE) biases over parental investment in offspring and or social interactions among offspring. The eusocial, haplodiploid honeybee (Apis mellifera) offers an excellent model for testing predictions of this theory and evaluating molecular regulators of PSGE. The honey bee model is becoming the new promising system to study potential imprinting and genomic mechanisms underlying social behavior. Here, we generated reciprocally crossed colonies between African Honeybees (high aggression) and Western honeybees (low aggression), and assessed paternal and maternal allelic expression and RNA methylation in brains and abdomen of soldiers performing defensive behaviors and hive workers as controls.