The brain atlas of a subsocial bee reflects that of eusocial Hymenoptera.

The evolutionary transition from solitary life to group-living in a society with cooperative brood care, reproductive division of labor and morphological castes is associated with increased cognitive demands for task-specialization. Associated with these demands, the brains of eusocial Hymenoptera divide transcriptomic signatures associated with foraging and reproduction to different populations of cells and also show diverse astrocyte and Kenyon cell types compared with solitary non-hymenopteran insects. The neural architecture of subsocial bees, which represent evolutionary antecedent states to eusocial Hymenoptera, could then show how widely this eusocial brain is conserved across aculeate Hymenoptera.

The effects of maternal care on the developmental transcriptome and metatranscriptome of a wild bee.

Maternal care acts as a strong environmental stimulus that can induce phenotypic plasticity in animals and may also alter their microbial communities through development. Here, we characterize the developmental metatranscriptome of the small carpenter bee, Ceratina calcarata, across developmental stages and in the presence or absence of mothers. Maternal care had the most influence during early development, with the greatest number and magnitude of differentially expressed genes between maternal care treatments, and enrichment for transcription factors regulating immune response in motherless early larvae.

Brain Gene Expression of Foraging Behavior and Social Environment in Ceratina calcarata.

Rudimentary social systems have the potential to both advance our understanding of how complex sociality may have evolved and our understanding of how changes in social environment may influence gene expression and cooperation. Recently, studies of primitively social Hymenoptera have greatly expanded empirical evidence for the role of social environment in shaping behavior and gene expression. Here, we compare brain gene expression profiles of foragers across social contexts in the small carpenter bee, Ceratina calcarata.