title: Comparative brain transcriptomic analyses of scouting across distinct behavioural and ecological contexts in honeybees.
abstract: Individual differences in behaviour are often consistent across time and contexts, but it is not clear whether such consistency is reflected at the molecular level. We explored this issue by studying scouting in honeybees in two different behavioural and ecological contexts: finding new sources of floral food resources and finding a new nest site. Brain gene expression profiles in food-source and nest-site scouts showed a significant overlap, despite large expression differences associated with the two different contexts. Class prediction and 'leave-one-out' cross-validation analyses revealed that a bee's role as a scout in either context could be predicted with 92.5% success using 89 genes at minimum. We also found that genes related to four neurotransmitter systems were part of a shared brain molecular signature in both types of scouts, and the two types of scouts were more similar for genes related to glutamate and GABA than catecholamine or acetylcholine signalling. These results indicate that consistent behavioural tendencies across different ecological contexts involve a mixture of similarities and differences in brain gene expression.
authors.affiliation: Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Zhengzheng S
authors.initials: ZS
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481, USA.
authors.forename: Heather R
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Mattila
authors.affiliation: Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Sandra L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Rodriguez-Zas
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
authors.forename: Bruce R
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Southey
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
authors.forename: Thomas D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Seeley
authors.affiliation: Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA Department of Entomology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA generobi@illinois.edu.
authors.forename: Gene E
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Robinson
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D019476:Insect Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology; D059467:Transcriptome
chemical_list: D019476:Insect Proteins
keywords: animal personality; gene expression; individual differences; novelty seeking; social insects