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Recombination, chromosome number and eusociality in the Hymenoptera

Extraordinarily high rates of recombination have been observed in some eusocial species. The most popular explanation is that increased recombination increases genetic variation among workers, which in turn increases colony performance, for example by increasing parasite resistance. However, support...

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Autores principales: Ross, L, Blackmon, H, Lorite, P, Gokhman, V E, Hardy, N B
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BlackWell Publishing Ltd 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4328152/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25382409
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12543
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author Ross, L
Blackmon, H
Lorite, P
Gokhman, V E
Hardy, N B
author_facet Ross, L
Blackmon, H
Lorite, P
Gokhman, V E
Hardy, N B
author_sort Ross, L
collection PubMed
description Extraordinarily high rates of recombination have been observed in some eusocial species. The most popular explanation is that increased recombination increases genetic variation among workers, which in turn increases colony performance, for example by increasing parasite resistance. However, support for the generality of higher recombination rates among eusocial organisms remains weak, due to low sample size and a lack of phylogenetic independence of observations. Recombination rate, although difficult to measure directly, is correlated with chromosome number. As predicted, several authors have noted that chromosome numbers are higher among the eusocial species of Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps). Here, we present a formal comparative analysis of karyotype data from 1567 species of Hymenoptera. Contrary to earlier studies, we find no evidence for an absolute difference between chromosome number in eusocial and solitary species of Hymenoptera. However, we find support for an increased rate of chromosome number change in eusocial taxa. We show that among eusocial taxa colony size is able to explain some of the variation in chromosome number: intermediate-sized colonies have more chromosomes than those that are either very small or very large. However, we were unable to detect effects of a number of other colony characteristics predicted to affect recombination rate – including colony relatedness and caste number. Taken together, our results support the view that a eusocial lifestyle has led to variable selection pressure for increased recombination rates, but that identifying the factors contributing to this variable selection will require further theoretical and empirical effort.
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spelling pubmed-43281522015-03-03 Recombination, chromosome number and eusociality in the Hymenoptera Ross, L Blackmon, H Lorite, P Gokhman, V E Hardy, N B J Evol Biol Research Papers Extraordinarily high rates of recombination have been observed in some eusocial species. The most popular explanation is that increased recombination increases genetic variation among workers, which in turn increases colony performance, for example by increasing parasite resistance. However, support for the generality of higher recombination rates among eusocial organisms remains weak, due to low sample size and a lack of phylogenetic independence of observations. Recombination rate, although difficult to measure directly, is correlated with chromosome number. As predicted, several authors have noted that chromosome numbers are higher among the eusocial species of Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps). Here, we present a formal comparative analysis of karyotype data from 1567 species of Hymenoptera. Contrary to earlier studies, we find no evidence for an absolute difference between chromosome number in eusocial and solitary species of Hymenoptera. However, we find support for an increased rate of chromosome number change in eusocial taxa. We show that among eusocial taxa colony size is able to explain some of the variation in chromosome number: intermediate-sized colonies have more chromosomes than those that are either very small or very large. However, we were unable to detect effects of a number of other colony characteristics predicted to affect recombination rate – including colony relatedness and caste number. Taken together, our results support the view that a eusocial lifestyle has led to variable selection pressure for increased recombination rates, but that identifying the factors contributing to this variable selection will require further theoretical and empirical effort. BlackWell Publishing Ltd 2015-01 2015-01-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4328152/ /pubmed/25382409 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12543 Text en © 2014 The Authors. Journal of Evolutionary Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Society for Evolutionary Biology. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Papers
Ross, L
Blackmon, H
Lorite, P
Gokhman, V E
Hardy, N B
Recombination, chromosome number and eusociality in the Hymenoptera
title Recombination, chromosome number and eusociality in the Hymenoptera
title_full Recombination, chromosome number and eusociality in the Hymenoptera
title_fullStr Recombination, chromosome number and eusociality in the Hymenoptera
title_full_unstemmed Recombination, chromosome number and eusociality in the Hymenoptera
title_short Recombination, chromosome number and eusociality in the Hymenoptera
title_sort recombination, chromosome number and eusociality in the hymenoptera
topic Research Papers
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4328152/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25382409
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jeb.12543
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