Publication Date:
2007-11-10
Description:
The most ecologically successful and destructive termite species are those with both a nymph caste and an irreversibly wingless worker caste. The early developmental bifurcation separating these castes is widely accepted to be strictly environmentally determined. We present evidence that genotype also influences this process. Offspring from four different crosses of nymph- and worker-derived secondary reproductive individuals had strongly differentiated caste and sex ratios, despite uniform rearing conditions. These data fit an X-linked, one-locus-two-allele model. Of five possible genotypes, one was lethal, two resulted in workers, and two resulted in either nymphs or environmentally determined workers. Caste is thus controlled both by environment and by a complex genetic inheritance pattern.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Hayashi, Yoshinobu -- Lo, Nathan -- Miyata, Hitoshi -- Kitade, Osamu -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2007 Nov 9;318(5852):985-7.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Natural History Laboratory, College of Science, Ibaraki University, Mito, Ibaraki 310-8512, Japan.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17991866" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Alleles
;
Animals
;
Behavior, Animal
;
Biological Evolution
;
Crosses, Genetic
;
Female
;
*Genes, Insect
;
*Genes, X-Linked
;
Genotype
;
Inheritance Patterns
;
Isoptera/*genetics/growth & development/*physiology
;
Male
;
Models, Genetic
;
Nymph/genetics/physiology
;
Parthenogenesis
;
Reproduction
;
Sex Ratio
;
Social Behavior
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
