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Eusocial insects offer a unique opportunity to analyze the evolution of body size differences between sexes in relation to social environment. The workers, being sterile females, are not subject to selection for reproductive function providing a natural control for parsing the effects of selection on reproductive function (i.e., sexual and fecundity selection) from other kinds of natural selection. Patterns of sexual size dimorphism (SSD) and testing of Rensch's rule controlling for phylogenetic effects were analyzed in the Meliponini or stingless bees. Theory predicts that queens may exhibit higher selection for fecundity in eusocial taxa, but contrary to this, we found mixed patterns of SSD in Meliponini. Non-Melipona species generally have a female-biased SSD, while all analyzed species of Melipona showed a male-biased SSD, indicating that the direction and magnitude of the selective pressures do not operate in the same way for all members of this taxon. The phylogenetic regressions revealed that the rate of divergence has not differed between the two castes of females and the males, that is, stingless bees do not seem to follow Rensch's rule (a slope >1), adding this highly eusocial taxon to the various solitary insect taxa not conforming with it. Noteworthy, when Melipona was removed from the analysis, the phylogenetic regressions for the thorax width of males on queens had a slope significantly smaller than 1, suggesting that the evolutionary divergence has been larger in queens than males, and could be explained by stronger selection on female fecundity only in non-Melipona species. Our results in the stingless bees question the classical explanation of female-biased SSD via fecundity and provide a first evidence of a more complex determination of SSD in highly eusocial species. We suggest that in highly eusocial taxa, additional selection mechanisms, possibly related to individual and colonial interests, could influence the evolution of environmentally determined traits such as body size.
Pubmed ID: 30891209 RIS Download
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Repository of phylogenetic information, specifically user-submitted phylogenetic trees and the data used to generate them. TreeBASE accepts all kinds of phylogenetic data (e.g., trees of species, trees of populations, trees of genes) representing all biotic taxa. Data in TreeBASE are exposed to the public if they are used in a publication that is in press or published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, book, conference proceedings, or thesis. Data used in publications that are in preparation or in review can be submitted to TreeBASE but will not be available to the public until they have passed peer review.
View all literature mentionsA cross-platform software program for Bayesian MCMC analysis of molecular sequences. It is entirely orientated towards rooted, time-measured phylogenies inferred using strict or relaxed molecular clock models. It can be used as a method of reconstructing phylogenies but is also a framework for testing evolutionary hypotheses without conditioning on a single tree topology. BEAST uses MCMC to average over tree space, so that each tree is weighted proportional to its posterior probability. We include a simple to use user-interface program for setting up standard analyses and a suit of programs for analysing the results.
View all literature mentionsMultiple sequence alignment method with reduced time and space complexity.Multiple sequence alignment with high accuracy and high throughput. Data analysis service for multiple sequence comparison by log- expectation.
View all literature mentionsTHIS RESOURCE IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE.Documented on February 28,2023. Software program for Bayesian inference and model choice across a wide range of phylogenetic and evolutionary models.
View all literature mentionsSoftware Python program to discover optimal partitioning schemes for DNA sequences.Used for simultaneously choosing partitioning schemes and models of molecular evolution for phylogenetic analyses of DNA, protein, and morphological data.
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