A Core Insect Sex-Determination Gene Has Surprising Within-Species Diversity Across Hymenoptera (Bees, Ants, Wasps, etc.)
Anaya Flowers, Gwenndolyn Campbell
Department of Biology
Faculty Supervisor: Scott Roy
Fem is a gene associated with feminization during early larval development across insects. In particular, Fem is “complementary sex determination”, the major sex determination mechanism in honeybees, a species within the large insect group Hymenoptera (ants, wasps, bees, etc.), associated with haplodiploid sex determination. We identified species of interest for investigating Fem, focusing on species with available genetic information within the NCBI database. We searched for Fem genes in these genomes and compared the amount of within-species nucleotide diversity for Fem genes to the rest of the genome. We found that Fem genes had surprisingly high within-species nucleotide diversity. We speculate that diversity at Fem may be advantageous to reinforce male-female developmental differences.