Horizontally transmitted parasitoid killing factor shapes insect defense to parasitoids

Interkingdom competition occurs between hymenopteran parasitoids and insect viruses sharing the same insect hosts. It has been assumed that parasitoid larvae die with the death of the infected host or as result of competition for host resources. Here we describe a gene family, parasitoid killing factor (pkf), that encodes proteins toxic to parasitoids of the Microgastrinae group and determines parasitism success. Pkfs are found in several entomopathogenic DNA virus families and in some lepidopteran genomes. We provide evidence of equivalent and specific toxicity against endoparasites for PKFs found in entomopoxvirus, ascovirus, baculovirus, and Lepidoptera through a mechanism that elicits apoptosis in the cells of susceptible parasitoids. This highlights the evolutionary arms race between parasitoids, viruses, and their insect hosts.

Identification and Functional Characterization of Plant Toxins

The evolutionary arms race between plants and herbivores has led, over millions of years, to the production of many substances that prevent plants from being over-eaten by plant-feeding animals [...]

Hybridization enables the fixation of selfish queen genotypes in eusocial colonies

The success of a eusocial colony depends on two main castes: queens that reproduce and sterile workers that help them. This division of labour is vulnerable to selfish genetic elements that enforce the development of their carriers into queens. Several factors, e.g. intra-colonial relatedness, are known to influence the spread of such selfish elements. Here we investigate the effects of a remarkable yet understudied ecological setting: where larvae produced by hybridization develop into sterile workers. Using mathematical modelling, we show that the coevolution of hybridization with caste determination readily triggers an evolutionary arms race between non-hybrid larvae that increasingly develop into queens, and queens that increasingly hybridize to produce workers. Even where hybridization reduces worker function and colony fitness, this race can lead to the loss of developmental plasticity and genetically hard-wired caste determination. Overall, our results help understand the repeated evolution towards complex reproductive systems (e.g. social hybridogenesis) and the special forms of parasitism (e.g. inquilinism) observed in many ant species.

Troubles with the evolutionary theory of self-deception

The evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers was the first to address the well-known psychological phenomenon of self-deception from the standpoint of natural science. According to Trivers, self-deception evolved as an offensive strategy in the evolutionary arms race between the deceiver and the deceived. Though apparently both tenable and plausible, Trivers? evolutionary theory of self-deception, which takes the enhancement of interpersonal deception as the proper function of self-deception, is burdened with the number of difficulties. In this paper, I will argue that it is conceptually impossible for self-deceivers to deceive others about false beliefs they have falsely acquired as if they were true. If interpersonal deception is the conceptual impossibility for self-deceivers, then interpersonal deception cannot be the proper function of self-deception.