Effects of queen pheromones on gene expression in ants and bees. Aculeata

Social insect queens produce 'queen pheromones': chemical signals that have manifold phenotypic effects on other colony members. Queen pheromones are chemically similar across many species of ants, wasps and bees, which is remarkable because these taxa diverged >150MYA, and evolved queens and workers independently. To test whether queen pheromones may affect worker physiology in a similar manner, we measured the transcriptomic effects of experimental exposure to queen pheromones in workers of two ant and two bee species (genera: Lasius, Apis, Bombus) using mRNA sequencing