Ants thrived after dinosaurs’ extinction thanks to “jumping genes”
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An international research team led by Dr. Lukas Schrader from the University of Münster discovered that ants benefited from transposable elements, DNA sequences known as “jumping genes”, after the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago.
For years, scientists considered these genes harmful “genomic parasites”, but recent research suggests they drive evolutionary change. The team found that ant groups with the most transposable elements in their DNA now include the largest number of species.
Researchers connected bursts of activity in these jumping genes to the early Palaeogene period, just before ants rapidly diversified into the more than 15,000 species known today. The asteroid created environmental changes, and the team believes these genes provided a genomic mechanism allowing ants to adapt and flourish. This pattern of increased jumping gene activity has also been observed in other animals undergoing rapid diversification, such as primates and bats.
The study further revealed a link between transposable elements and the expansion of genes responsible for chemical communication. Specifically, the number of odorant receptors, essential for ant social behavior like navigation and nestmate recognition, increased, suggesting ants became better at using scent to coordinate their colonies. To reach these conclusions, the researchers analyzed genomes from 163 ant species, spanning 12 of the 16 ant subfamilies, and traced the history of transposable element activity over 100 million years.
