A study of honeybee 'anarchy' has uncovered several regions of the genome that influence cheating behaviour.
Honeybee (Apis mellifera; pictured right) queens emit a pheromone to 'switch off' the ovaries of female worker bees, but some individuals are more sensitive to the pheromone than others. Those who fail to respond are branded anarchists because they disrupt the social order of the hive.
Peter Oxley of the University of Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues tracked down regions of the genome that have a role in ovary activation. They found four such regions that together account for 25% of the variation in this trait observed in the population of honeybees they studied.
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Genetics: The genetics of anarchy. Nature 454, 4 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/454004c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/454004c
