Social evolution. Genomic signatures of evolutionary transitions from solitary to group living. Author Karen Kapheim, Hailin Pan, Cai Li, Steven Salzberg, Daniela Puiu, Tanja Magoc, Hugh Robertson, Matthew Hudson, Aarti Venkat, Brielle Fischman, Alvaro Hernandez, Mark Yandell, Daniel Ence, Carson Holt, George Yocum, William Kemp, Jordi Bosch, Robert Waterhouse, Evgeny Zdobnov, Eckart Stolle, Bernhard Kraus, Sophie Helbing, Robin Moritz, Karl Glastad, Brendan Hunt, Michael Goodisman, Frank Hauser, Cornelis Grimmelikhuijzen, Daniel Pinheiro, Francis Nunes, Michelle Soares, Érica Tanaka, Zilá Simões, Klaus Hartfelder, Jay Evans, Seth Barribeau, Reed Johnson, Jonathan Massey, Bruce Southey, Martin Hasselmann, Daniel Hamacher, Matthias Biewer, Clement Kent, Amro Zayed, Charles Blatti, Saurabh Sinha, Spencer Johnston, Shawn Hanrahan, Sarah Kocher, Jun Wang, Gene Robinson, Guojie Zhang Publication Year 2015 Type Journal Article Abstract The evolution of eusociality is one of the major transitions in evolution, but the underlying genomic changes are unknown. We compared the genomes of 10 bee species that vary in social complexity, representing multiple independent transitions in social evolution, and report three major findings. First, many important genes show evidence of neutral evolution as a consequence of relaxed selection with increasing social complexity. Second, there is no single road map to eusociality; independent evolutionary transitions in sociality have independent genetic underpinnings. Third, though clearly independent in detail, these transitions do have similar general features, including an increase in constrained protein evolution accompanied by increases in the potential for gene regulation and decreases in diversity and abundance of transposable elements. Eusociality may arise through different mechanisms each time, but would likely always involve an increase in the complexity of gene networks. Keywords Animals, Gene Expression Regulation, Evolution, Molecular, Gene Regulatory Networks, Transcription Factors, Selection, Genetic, Genome, Insect, DNA Transposable Elements, Social Behavior, Phylogeny, Transcriptome, Bees, Genetic Drift, Amino-Acid N-Acetyltransferase Journal Science Volume 348 Issue 6239 Pages 1139-43 Date Published 06/2015 ISSN Number 1095-9203 DOI 10.1126/science.aaa4788 Alternate Journal Science PMCID PMC5471836 PMID 25977371 PubMedPubMed CentralGoogle ScholarBibTeXEndNote X3 XML