The recent increase in genomic data is revealing an unexpected perspective of gene loss as
a pervasive source of genetic variation that can cause adaptive phenotypic diversity. This …

The genomes of many animals, plants and fungi are tagged by methylation of DNA cytosine.
To understand the biological significance of this epigenetic mark it is essential to know …

Cytosine DNA methylation is a heritable epigenetic mark present in many eukaryotic
organisms. Although DNA methylation likely has a conserved role in gene silencing, the …

Aphids are important agricultural pests and also biological models for studies of insect-plant
interactions, symbiosis, virus vectoring, and the developmental causes of extreme …

In honey bees (Apis mellifera) the behaviorally and reproductively distinct queen and worker
female castes derive from the same genome as a result of differential intake of royal jelly and …

Fertile queens and sterile workers are alternative forms of the adult female honeybee that
develop from genetically identical larvae following differential feeding with royal jelly. We …

Epigenetics refers to stable alterations in gene expression with no underlying modifications
in the genetic sequence and is best exemplified by differentiation, in which multiple cell …

Here we report the genome sequence of the honeybee Apis mellifera, a key model for social
behaviour and essential to global ecology through pollination. Compared with other …

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of theoretical and empirical studies of sex
allocation, transforming how we understand the allocation of resources to male and female …

Polyphenism is the phenomenon where two or more distinct phenotypes are produced by
the same genotype. Examples of polyphenism provide some of the most compelling systems …