Social upheaval: Gene expression shifts in wasps reveal hidden potential.
The study looked at how genes affect the different roles of paper wasps in a colony. When the queen was removed, some wasps changed their gene activity to become more like queens or workers, even if they didn't look different. Age played a big role in this change. This shows that gene activity can change a lot without changing how a wasp looks, making it hard to predict a wasp's role just by looking at its genes.