Ontogeny of superorganisms: Social control of queen specialization in ants

Abstract

Abstract The functioning of biological systems relies on the cooperation of specialized components and understanding the processes that produce such specialization is a major challenge in biology. Here, we study the ontogeny of biological systems at a new phenotypic level: the superorganisms (i.e. insect societies with specialized individuals). We investigate how founding queens, the earliest developmental stage of ant colonies, transition from expressing behavioural pluripotency to becoming strictly specialized in egg production. We demonstrate that the presence of workers both initiates and maintains this queen specialization, and propose that such a social control of queen behaviour is common in ants and regulated by ancestral mechanisms. These findings contradict the traditional view of social insect queens as being intrinsically specialized in egg production and may reshape our understanding of the division of labour in insect societies. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.