Expression of abdominal-A homeotic gene in ants with different abdominal morphologies

In most insect groups, the Hox gene abdominal-A specifies the development of consecutive monotonous anterior abdominal segments. In contrast, the ant family shows pronounced differentiation of the anterior abdominal segments: the first is fused to the thoracic segments, the second, the petiole, is a specialised segment in all ants and the third, the post-petiole, can either take the appearance of a gastric segment (as in the Dolichoderinae) or of a petiole-like segment, (as in the Myrmicinae). Changes in the regulation of the abdominal-A gene are suspected to be instrumental in this morphological differentiation. Previous work has shown that the genomic coding sequences of the abdominal-A gene is nearly identical between all ant subfamilies. Therefore any evolutionary change within the ant family in the developmental activity of abdominal-A is most likely due to a change in gene expression than to a change in the activity of the Abdominal-A protein. Here I present the embryonic expression of the abdominal-A gene in two ant species with different abdominal morphologies. I find that by the late-germ band stage, abdominal-A transcripts are detected in a similar pattern in both species whereas the early patterning of abdominal-A is distinctly different between the two species.