Table 2. Assessment of “forager-like” or “nurse-like” characteristics of the gene lists from Table 1, using a set of 100 “behavior marker” genes derived from a previous study (1): Chi-square analyses.  The behavior markers were the best 100 genes for classifying individual brain expression profiles as nurse or forager, and their expression is associated with behavior (either nursing or foraging), and not age (1).  We compared the distribution of these genes that were either up-regulated in foragers (F) or up-regulated in nurses (N) relative to their distribution in each gene list. Numbers in parentheses are number of genes in each list (p < 0.05).  Similar results were obtained using gene lists at p < 0.001, except trends for manganese and QMP were not significant due to the small number of genes tested. P-values in bold indicate the strongest effects. Gene expression data for QMP were taken from ref. (15).

 

	F markers (43)	N markers (57)
Field colonies
Pre-foraging maturation ↑ (2130)	28	18	χ2 = 9.461
Pre-foraging maturation ↓ (1963)	7	24	p = 0.0021
Hive bee-to-forager ↑ (2073)	37	1	χ2 = 78.10
Hive bee-to-forager ↓ (2015)	0	48	p = 2.2e-16
A.m. ligustica ↑ (1552)	16	13	χ2 = 0.5678
A.m. mellifera ↑ (1391)	8	12	p = 0.45
Treatments in laboratory cages
Methoprene ↑ (798)	23	6	χ2 = 20.07
Methoprene ↓ (789)	2	18	p = 7.5e-6
Manganese ↑ (1217)	18	3	χ2 = 18.70
Manganese ↓ (1322)	4	20	p = 1.5e-5
cGMP ↑ (799)	12	10	χ2 = 0.0058
cGMP ↓ (744)	7	7	p = 0.94
cAMP ↑ (516)	5	9	χ2 = 3.62
cAMP ↓ (483)	7	1	p = 0.057
cGMP > cAMP (663)	15	4	χ2 = 2.83
cGMP < cAMP (644)	9	10	p = 0.093
Inhibitory pheromone treatment in laboratory cages (ref. 14)
QMP ↑ ()	1	11	χ2 = 16.78
QMP ↓ ()	12	0	p = 4.2e-5