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Transcriptomes of parents identify parenting strategies and sexual conflict in a subsocial beetle

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Date
29/09/2015
Author
Parker, Darren James
Cunningham, Christopher B.
Walling, Craig A.
Stamper, Clare E.
Head, Megan L.
Roy-Zokan, Eileen M.
McKinney, Elizabeth C.
Ritchie, Michael Gordon
Moore, Allen J.
Funder
NERC
Grant ID
NE/J020818/1
Keywords
Drosophila takeout gene
Juvenile-hormone
Burying beetles
Nicrophorus-vespilloides
Evolutionary transitions
Social-Behavior
Honey-bee
Feeding-behavior
Penduline tits
Life-history
QH301 Biology
QL Zoology
BDC
R2C
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Abstract
Parenting in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides is complex and, unusually, the sex and number of parents that can be present is flexible. Such flexibility is expected to involve specialized behaviour by the two sexes under biparental conditions. Here, we show that offspring fare equally well regardless of the sex or number of parents present. Comparing transcriptomes, we find a largely overlapping set of differentially expressed genes in both uniparental and biparental females and in uniparental males including vitellogenin, associated with reproduction, and takeout, influencing sex-specific mating and feeding behaviour. Gene expression in biparental males is similar to that in non-caring states. Thus, being ‘biparental’ in N. vespilloides describes the family social organization rather than the number of directly parenting individuals. There was no specialization; instead, in biparental families, direct male parental care appears to be limited with female behaviour unchanged. This should lead to strong sexual conflict.
Citation
Parker , D J , Cunningham , C B , Walling , C A , Stamper , C E , Head , M L , Roy-Zokan , E M , McKinney , E C , Ritchie , M G & Moore , A J 2015 , ' Transcriptomes of parents identify parenting strategies and sexual conflict in a subsocial beetle ' , Nature Communications , vol. 6 , 8449 . https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9449
Publication
Nature Communications
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9449
ISSN
2041-1723
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © the Authors 2015. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Description
This work was funded by UK NERC grants to M.G.R. and A.J.M. an NERC studentship to D.J.P. the University of Georgia and a US NSF grant to A.J.M. and M.G.R.
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  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/7743

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