Experimental increase in fecundity causes upregulation of fecundity and body maintenance genes in the fat body of ant queens

In most organisms, fecundity and longevity are negatively associated and the molecular regulation of these two life history traits is highly interconnected. In addition, nutrient intake often has opposing effects on lifespan and reproduction. In contrast to solitary insects, the main reproductive individual of social hymenopterans, the queen, is also the most long-lived. During development, queen larvae are well-nourished, but we are only beginning to understand the impact of nutrition on the queens’ adult life and the molecular regulation and connectivity of fecundity and longevity. Here, we used two experimental manipulations to alter queen fecundity in the ant Temnothorax rugatulus and investigated associated changes in fat body gene expression. Egg removal triggered a fecundity increase, leading to expression changes in genes with functions in fecundity such as oogenesis and body maintenance. Dietary restriction lowered the egg production of queens and altered the expression of gene..., Temnothorax rugatulus is a small ant with colonies of a few hundred workers and one to several queens. Two queen morphs can occur and we only used colonies of the common larger queen morph (19). These ants reside in rock crevices in forests throughout Western North America. We collected 105 T. rugatulus colonies in the Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona, USA in August 2015 (Table S1). In our laboratory, colonies were transferred to artificial nest boxes and kept at 22°C and 12h light / 12h dark in a climate chamber.
For the dietary-restriction experiment, we limited the queens’ access to workers, as these might buffer food restrictions imposed on the queen. The queen was isolated with five workers to ensure some food provisioning in the upper part of an artificial experimental nestsite (queenright part, QR), while the reminder of the colony inhabited the lower section (queenless, QL). Both parts were separated by a metal grid, allowing the exchange of volatiles, but not of food (Fig. S1). Th..., , # Data from: Experimental increase in fecundity causes upregulation of body maintenance genes in ant queens

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DEGs_Dietary_Restrictions_Egg_Removal.xlsx -->   The list of upregulated contigs with their blast annotation for each group and the two experiments, with sheet 1: the list of upregulated contigs in the Non dietary restriction treatment compared to the Dietary restriction one from the dietary restriction experiment;  sheet 2: the list of upregulated contigs in the Dietary restriction treatment compared to the Non dietary restriction one from the dietary restriction experiment; sheet 3: the list of upregulated contigs in the No egg removal treatment compared to the Egg removal one from the egg removal experiment;  sheet 4: the list of upregulated contigs in the Egg removal treatment compared to the No egg removal one from the egg removal experiment; BlastX is the blast annotation; lfcSE is ...