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SysEB

Student Competition 10-Minute Paper

Grad 10-min: SysEB, Social Insect Genetics

Recombination mapping of the Brazilian stingless bee Frieseomelitta varia confirms high recombination in social hymenoptera

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Student Competition On-Demand
Meiotic recombination is a universal process in all sexual organisms that shuffles allele combinations and promotes accurate segregation of chromosomes. The widely accepted evolutionary advantage of meiotic recombination is that it increases the efficacy of natural selection. All studied social insects so far have shown exceptionally high recombination rates. These high rates are presumably an essential adaptation in social insects and have been suggested to play a role in innovation and evolution of sociality. However, empirical data for recombination rates are limited to only a few social hymenopteran taxa. To understand if elevated levels of recombination are indeed a peculiarity of social insects, it is crucial to generate more empirical data from different social clades. Here, we present the linkage map of highly social Brazilian stingless bee, Frieseomelitta varia, which is the first linkage map for any stingless bee species (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini). Our recombination rate estimate of 9.7 cM/Mb in this most diverse corbiculate bee taxon confirms the association of elevated recombination with sociality, strengthening the argument that social evolution in hymenopteran insects invariably selects for high genomic recombination rates.