Patterns of positive selection in seven ant genomes
Julien Roux, Eyal Privman, Sebastien Moretti, Josephine T. Daub, Marc Robinson-Rechavi, Laurent Keller
(Submitted on 19 Nov 2013)

The evolution of ant species is marked by remarkable adaptations that allowed the development of very complex social systems. To identify how ant-specific adaptations are associated with specific patterns of molecular evolution we searched for signs of positive selection on amino-acid changes in proteins during the evolution of the ant lineage. We identified 24 functional categories of genes which were enriched for positively selected genes in the ant lineage. We also reanalyzed genome-wide dataset in bees and flies with the same methodology to check if genes under positive selection in ants were also under positive selection in the other analyzed lineages. Notably, genes implicated in immunity were enriched for positively selected genes in the three lineages, ruling out the hypothesis that the evolution of hygienic behaviors in social insects caused a major relaxation of selective pressure on this set of genes. Our scan also indicated that genes implicated in neurogenesis and olfaction started to undergo increased positive selection before the evolution of sociality in Hymenoptera, although it is assumed that the main challenges of the olfactory and neural systems in this lineage occurred with the evolution of social living. Finally, the comparison between these three lineages allowed us to pinpoint molecular evolution patterns that were specific to the ant lineage. In particular, there was relaxed selective pressure for genes related to metabolism in ants but not in bees and flies, possibly reflecting the loss of flight in ant workers. By contrast, there was recurrent positive selection on genes with mitochondrial functions specifically in ants, suggesting that the activity of mitochondria was improved during ant evolution. This might have been an important step toward the evolution of extreme lifespan that is a hallmark of this lineage.