@article{05201bfde9964d2cb2a92a15c6088c71,
title = "Morphological and genomic shifts in mole-rat {\textquoteleft}queens{\textquoteright} increase fecundity but reduce skeletal integrity",
abstract = "In some mammals and many social insects, highly cooperative societies are characterized by reproductive division of labor, in which breeders and nonbreeders become behaviorally and morphologically distinct. While differences in behavior and growth between breeders and nonbreeders have been extensively described, little is known of their molecular underpinnings. Here, we investigate the consequences of breeding for skeletal morphology and gene regulation in highly cooperative Damaraland mole-rats. By experimentally assigning breeding {\textquoteleft}queen{\textquoteright} status versus nonbreeder status to age-matched littermates, we confirm that queens experience vertebral growth that likely confers advantages to fecundity. However, they also upregulate bone resorption pathways and show reductions in femoral mass, which predicts increased vulnerability to fracture. Together, our results show that, as in eusocial insects, reproductive division of labor in mole-rats leads to gene regulatory rewiring and extensive morphological plasticity. However, in mole-rats, concentrated reproduction is also accompanied by costs to bone strength.",
author = "Johnston, {Rachel A.} and Philippe Vullioud and Jack Thorley and Henry Kirveslahti and Leyao Shen and Sayan Mukherjee and Karner, {Courtney M.} and Tim Clutton-Brock and Jenny Tung",
note = "Funding Information: We thank Tim Vink, Dave Gaynor, and the mole-rat house staff and volunteers for their tremendous contributions to the Kalahari Mole-rat Project. We also thank Irene Garcia, Mari Cobb, Brianna Bowman, Anna Luiza Wolf, Alice Zhou, Yilin Yu, BJ Nielsen, Tawni Voyles, and Lorin Crawford for their contributions to sample collection, data generation, and modeling, Graham Treece for guidance on quantifying bone thickness with Stradview, Karl Jepsen for sharing data on mouse femurs, Lou DeF-rate for guidance on estimating bone strength, Saideep Gona and Luis Barreiro for their contributions on the footprint analysis, and members of the Tung lab for feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. Support for this work was provided by the Human Frontier Science Program (RGP0051-2017 to JT, SM, and TCB), the National Science Foundation (IOS-7801004 to JT), the National Institutes of Health (AR076325 and AR071967 to CK, F32HD095616 to RAJ), a Sloan Foundation Early Career Research Fellowship to JT, a Foerster-Bernstein Postdoctoral Fellowship to RAJ, and a Natural Environmental Research Council Doctoral Training Program to JaT. This research is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 294494 and 742808 to TCB). High-performance computing resources were supported by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center (Grant Number 2016-IDG-1013). Funding Information: We thank Tim Vink, Dave Gaynor, and the mole-rat house staff and volunteers for their tremendous contributions to the Kalahari Mole-rat Project. We also thank Irene Garcia, Mari Cobb, Brianna Bow-man, Anna Luiza Wolf, Alice Zhou, Yilin Yu, BJ Nielsen, Tawni Voyles, and Lorin Crawford for their contributions to sample collection, data generation, and modeling, Graham Treece for guidance on quantifying bone thickness with Stradview, Karl Jepsen for sharing data on mouse femurs, Lou DeF-rate for guidance on estimating bone strength, Saideep Gona and Luis Barreiro for their contributions on the footprint analysis, and members of the Tung lab for feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript. Support for this work was provided by the Human Frontier Science Program (RGP0051-2017 to JT, SM, and TCB), the National Science Foundation (IOS-7801004 to JT), the National Institutes of Health (AR076325 and AR071967 to CK, F32HD095616 to RAJ), a Sloan Foundation Early Career Research Fellowship to JT, a Foerster-Bernstein Postdoctoral Fellowship to RAJ, and a Natural Environmental Research Council Doctoral Training Program to JaT. This research is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No. 294494 and 742808 to TCB). High-performance computing resources were supported by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center (Grant Number 2016-IDG-1013). European Research Council 294494 Tim Clutton-Brock European Research Council 742808 Tim Clutton-Brock Human Frontier Science Program RGP0051-2017 Sayan Mukherjee Tim Clutton-Brock Jenny Tung National Science Foundation IOS-7801004 Jenny Tung National Institutes of Health F32HD095616 Rachel A Johnston Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Jenny Tung Foerster-Bernstein Postdoctoral Fellowship Rachel A Johnston Natural Environment Research Council Doctoral Training Program Grant Jack Thorley North Carolina Biotechnology Center 2016-IDG-1013 Jenny Tung National Institutes of Health AR076325 Courtney M Karner National Institutes of Health AR071967 Courtney M Karner The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} Johnston et al.",
year = "2021",
doi = "10.7554/ELIFE.65760",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "10",
journal = "eLife",
issn = "2050-084X",
publisher = "eLife Sciences Publications",
}