Latent gene network expression underlies partial re-evolution of a polyphenic trait in the worker caste of ants
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Polyphenisms––where alternative phenotypes develop from a single genome in response to environmental cues––are not only widespread in nature, but also occur at multiple levels of biological organization, from cells to individuals to societies. Polyphenism is thought to promote phenotypic diversification through the gain, loss, and re-evolution of alternative phenotypes. After the origin of a polyphenism, one of the alternative phenotypes often retains the developmental capacity to produce the ancestral trait, thereby permitting the other to evolve rapidly. Yet, little is known about the developmental processes underlying the re-evolution of polyphenic traits and how they may produce phenotypic diversification. Here we address this question by focusing on the caste polyphenism in ant societies, which produces a winged queen caste and a wingless worker caste in a single colony in response to environmental cues. We show, in a hyperdiverse group of ants, that a caste-specific trait called the ocelli (3 simple eyes on the dorsal head) is always present across queen castes but was lost and partially re-evolved multiple times, giving rise to novel patterns (1 ocelli) in the worker castes. Surprisingly, we discovered that a hidden (latent) expression of the ocelli gene regulatory network in worker castes that lost ocelli underlies the partial re-evolution of ocelli in this group. We therefore propose that latent developmental potentials may generally persist across polyphenic systems, including ant castes, and may facilitate the partial re-evolution of novel phenotypic patterns.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".