Living alone or in a group? Sweat bees reveal the genetic basis of social behavior.

A long-standing puzzle in biology is how some animals, from humans to bees, become social.
now, a study suggests that a change in the expression of a single gene in humble sweat bees may determine which sweat bees are solitary and which are good at socializing.
gene previously linked to human autism, as well as social behavior in animals such as mice and locusts.
's latest discovery brings scientists one step closer to demonstrating the common evolutionary cornerstones of social behavior.
1950s, the French biologist C?cile Plateaux-Qu?nu recorded two different behaviors of a sweat bee, the tunnel bee.
female bees living in colder parts of France usually do not have "assistants", while female bees in warmer areas have "assistants".
at the same time, in warmer areas, female bees lay two sets of eggs - the first group of hatched sebees took care of the second group.
Studies by Plateaux-Qu?nu have also confirmed that this difference can be inherited.
20 years later, Sarah Kocher, an evolutionary geneticist who now works at Princeton University in the United States, decided to follow up on the groundbreaking study of Plateaux-Qu?nu.
she collected 150 bees from three cold and three warm regions of France.
Kocher and colleagues, who were also postdoctoral students at Harvard University at the time, analyzed the bees' DNA to look for genetic differences that might explain the two behaviors.
after sequencing and comparing the genomes of six groups of sebees, the researchers found 200 differences with 62 genes at its core.
one of them, a gene called syntaxin 1a, caught the attention of the people.
it is responsible for creating synaptic fusion proteins, a protein that plays an important role in transmitting signals between nerve cells. The gene, which is linked to the social behavior of many animals, best distinguishes between a swarm and a single-living sweatbe,
Kocher said.
later, Kocher measured the gene's activity in swarms and single-living sweat bees.
the gene was about 15 times more active in the group of sweaty bees than in the single-living bee.
researchers report the results in the journal Nature-Communications.
(Xu Xu) Related Paper Information: DOI: 10.1126/science.aav7683 Source: China Science Daily