WaspsProject

This project contains the supplementary materials for the paper Transcriptomics of an extended phenotype: parasite manipulation of wasp social behavior correlates with shifting expression of caste-related genes

Abstract

We investigated the relationship between the primitively eusocial paper wasp, Polistes dominula, and its obligate endoparasite, Xenos vesparum (Insecta: Strepsiptera) to understand the effects of a parasite on its host’s brain transcriptome. Previous research suggests that X. vesparum exerts control over physio-behavioral toolboxes involved in host caste determination in ways that benefit the parasite. Specifically, we hypothesized that X. vesparum-infested (stylopized) females that would typically be workers show a shift in their transcriptomic profiles towards being more like pre-overwintering queens (gynes), as the behavior of stylopized females resembles that of typical gynes. We used RNA-sequencing data to determine patterns of brain gene expression in stylopized females, and compared this to unstylopized workers and gynes. In support of our hypothesis, we found that stylopized females, despite sharing numerous physiological and life history characteristics with members of the worker caste, show similar brain expression patterns to those of unstylopized gynes. These data suggest the parasite affects its host by utilizing preexisting host neurogenetic machinery to shift naturally-occurring social behavior in a way that is beneficial to the parasite, rather than inducing completely novel host behavior.

DE Analysis script user guide

1. Use git clone https://github.com/ruolin/WaspsProject/ to download or use the download link in the upper-right corner on the project page.

2. Unzip the input files in the folder HTSeq-Count-BFAST-raw-reads-count to your current dir.

3. Before Running the R script, set the working dir to current dir by uncommenting and editing this line # setwd("/path/to/your/current/dir") in the code.

4. Install the dependent libraries in R

5. VennDiagram

6. RColorBrewer

7. edgeR

8. xlsx

9. The R script also generates two excel spreadsheets, one for the condition-averaged raw reads counts for the 8484 expressed genes, the other for the edges R FDR values for each pairwise comparison.