Review Article
Epigenetics in Social Insects: A New Direction for Understanding the Evolution of Castes
Table 1
Features of consistent and differential methylation in social insects.
| Consistent methylation | Differential methylation |
| Sites consistently methylated | Methylation varies across tissues, castes, and individuals | Depleted CpG content [22, 23] | Less depleted CpG content [22, 23] | Primarily found in exons [33] | Primarily found in exons [33] | Consistent expression levels/splicing patterns across tissues and castes [22] | Variable expression levels/splicing patterns across tissues and castes [23] | Well-conserved across insect taxa [47] | Not yet known whether patterns conserved or divergent across taxa |
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