Comparative genomics of slave-making ants and their hosts

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Erich Bornberg-Bauer; Professorin Dr. Susanne Foitzik; Professor Dr. Jürgen Heinze
• Subject Area: Evolution, Anthropology
• Term: from 2016 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 298390451

Aim of the project is to detect genomic traces of the parallel evolution of one of the most bizarre life histories of social insects, slave-making in ants. Workers of slave-making ants pillage brood from the nests of closely related ant species, which after emergence serve as slaves in the slave-maker colony. Given that evolution across different time scales involves different genomic mechanisms, we will test for possible signals of adaptation to slave-making at the levels of gene regulation, coding sequences, and gene or domain losses, gains and rearrangements. To do so we will compare the genomes of three related, but convergently evolved slave-making ants with the genomes of two of their host species. To increase the statistical power, these data will be complemented by data from an ongoing genome analysis in an additional pair of slave-makers and hosts and transcriptomes from additional slave-makers, hosts, and two related species, which are not exploited by social parasites.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants