Juvenile hormone pleiotropy links reproduction, age polyethism, and cuticular hydrocarbons in a highly eusocial wasp

Published: 23 May 2026| Version 1 | DOI: 10.17632/gtss26k54k.1
Contributors:
Helena Mendes Ferreira,
,
,
,
,

Description

This dataset contains raw data and R scripts for the study “Juvenile hormone pleiotropy links reproduction, age polyethism, and cuticular hydrocarbons in a highly eusocial wasp”. The data were used to analyse how juvenile hormone manipulation affects ovarian development, age-related task allocation, and cuticular hydrocarbon profiles in Vespula vulgaris workers. 1.2_Script_HMFerreira_VV_2026.R: R script used to analyse ovarian development and age-related division of labour in Vespula vulgaris workers under juvenile hormone manipulation. The script uses individual-level behavioural and physiological data, including treatment group, behavioural task, nest identity, queen presence, worker age, largest terminal oocyte size, and head size. It performs model selection and analyses using Gamma generalized linear mixed models for ovarian development and multinomial logistic regression for task allocation. 2.2_Script_HMF_VV_2026.R: R script used to analyse cuticular hydrocarbon profiles of Vespula vulgaris workers under juvenile hormone manipulation. The script uses raw GC-MS CHC peak-area data and associated metadata, including worker identity, nest identity, treatment, task, age, and ovarian development. It performs centred log-ratio transformation, PCA, PERMANOVA, dispersion analyses, pairwise post-hoc tests, and compound-level mixed models.

Files

Steps to reproduce

1. Download all files from the repository and place them in the same working directory. 2. Open R or RStudio and set the working directory to the folder containing the data and scripts. 3. Install the required R packages listed at the beginning of each script. The analyses were run in R v4.5.2. 4. Run 1.2_Script_HMFerreira_VV_2026.R to reproduce the ovarian development and task-allocation analyses. This script uses Vvulgaris_worker_ovary_task_data.csv and generates the model outputs, post-hoc comparisons, and figures related to ovarian development and division of labour. 5. Run 2.2_Script_HMFerreira_VV_2026.R to reproduce the cuticular hydrocarbon analyses. This script uses Vvulgaris_worker_CHC_peak_areas.csv and generates the CLR transformation, PCA, PERMANOVA, dispersion analyses, pairwise comparisons, compound-level mixed models, and associated output tables. 6. Output files, including figures and tables, will be saved in the working directory. File names in the scripts should match the uploaded CSV filenames; if the CSV files are renamed, update the read.csv() calls accordingly before running the scripts.

Institutions

Categories

Evolutionary Biology, Animal Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Chemical Ecology, Chemical Communication

Funders

Licence