Study links mobile DNA to ants’ evolutionary expansion
Researchers also found an association between mobile genetic elements and the expansion of genes involved in ants’ chemical communication.
Mobile DNA sequences may have helped ants diversify after the mass extinction about 66 million years ago, according to research published in Science Advances. An international team compared genomes from 163 ant species and found that groups with more of these genetic elements tended to have more species.
Known as transposable elements, the DNA segments can relocate within a genome and copy themselves. The researchers identified independent increases in their activity across several major ant lineages during the early Paleogene, about 66 million years ago. Those increases preceded the lineages’ expansion into thousands of species, suggesting a possible genetic link between environmental disruption following the asteroid impact and ants’ subsequent diversification.
The team also linked the mobile elements to growth in gene families involved in chemical communication, particularly odorant receptors. These receptors help ants detect smells used in navigation, colony recognition and coordination. The findings suggest that transposable elements may have helped expand these sensory systems.
Dr. Lukas Schrader, of the University of Münster’s Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity (IEB) in Germany, led the study. The sampled species covered twelve of the 16 surviving ant subfamilies. By comparing their genomes, the researchers reconstructed changes in transposable elements and their activity over the past 100 million years.
