DOI: 10.5061/dryad.83bk3jb1d
title: Comparative transcriptomics and phylostratigraphy of Argentine ant odorant receptors

description: Nestmate recognition in ants is regulated through the detection of
 cuticular hydrocarbons by odorant receptors (ORs) in the antennae. These
 ORs are crucial for maintaining colony cohesion that allows invasive ant
 species to dominate colonized environments. In the invasive Argentine ant,
 Linepithema humile, ORs regulating nestmate recognition are thought to be
 present in a clade of nine exon odorant receptors, but the identity of the
 specific genes remains unknown. We sought to narrow down the list of
 candidate genes using transcriptomics and phylostratigraphy. Comparative
 transcriptomic analyses were conducted on the antennae, head, thorax, and
 legs of Argentine ant workers. We have identified a set of twenty-one
 nine-exon odorant receptors enriched in the antennae compared to the other
 tissues, allowing for downstream verification of whether they can detect
 Argentine ant cuticular hydrocarbons. Further investigation of these ORs
 could allow us to further understand the mechanisms underlying nestmate
 recognition and colony cohesion in ants.
description: # Comparative transcriptomics and phylostratigraphy of Argentine ant
 odorant receptors
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.83bk3jb1d](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.83bk3jb1d) Contains phylostratigraphy analysis results for PLoS ONE submission. Data were generated by comparing the *L. humile* proteome to thirty proteomes from *L. humile* and other ant and insect species via BLASTp analysis (detailed in "Table S1.xlsx"). Using these data, we determined that odorant receptor proteins are more likely to show more recent origins in evolutionary history than the *L. humile* proteome in general. However, of the 338 taxonomically-restricted proteins we found, none were odorant receptors. ## Description of the data and file structure ###### Phylostratigraphy Final.xlsx Multipage Excel spreadsheet showing the BLAST results and phylostratigraphic distances of each protein in the *L. humile* proteome. Distance is measured in "nodes", which is the amount of nodes separating *L. humile* and the subject species in a phylogenetic tree. Each page contains the following columns: qseqid - The query protein used in the BLAST search sseqid - The subject protein found to show sequence similarity to the query protein % identity - Percent of amino acids that are identical between the aligned query and subject sequences. evalue - Quality check on the alignment quality. The number of expected hits of similar quality that could be found by chance bitscore - Quality check on alignment quality. The required size of a sequence database to find the current match by chance (2^bitscore) Subject Species - Species name associated with the sseqid Node Distance - Amount of nodes separating *L.humile* and Subject Species in phylogenetic space. ###### OR Phylostratigraphy Final.xlsx Multipage Excel spreadsheet similar to **Phylostratigraphy Final.xlsx**, but results are for OR protein sequences from *Smith et al. 2011* Each page contains the following columns: qseqid - The query protein used in the BLAST search sseqid - The subject protein found to show sequence similarity to the query protein % identity - Percent of amino acids that are identical between the aligned query and subject sequences. evalue - Quality check on the alignment quality. The number of expected hits of similar quality that could be found by chance bitscore - Quality check on alignment quality. The required size of a sequence database to find the current match by chance (2^bitscore) Subject Species - Species name associated with the sseqid Node Distance - Amount of nodes separating *L.humile* and Subject Species in phylogenetic space. ###### **Phylostratigraphy Node Distance.csv** CSV spreadsheet with a list of all species used in phylostratigraphy analysis. The spreadsheet contains the following columns: Subject Species - Species name associated with the sseqid Node Distance - Amount of nodes separating *L.humile* and Subject Species in phylogenetic space. ###### Collated\_Proteome\_FASTA.fasta FASTA file used in BLASTp analysis. Contains protein FASTA information for the thirty proteomes used in the analysis. ###### Table S1.xlsx Excel spreadsheet with a list of the species used in the phylostratigraphy analysis. The spreadsheet contains the following columns: Species Name - Name of the species Accession - NCBI Assembly Accession # for the proteome data for each species. ## Sharing/Access information Transcriptomic data generated for this manuscript were deposited in the NCBI SRA ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/?term=PRJNA1006049](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/?term=PRJNA1006049))