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