Welcome to Amro Zayed’s Lab @ the Department of Biology, York University.

Our goal is to understand both the “How’s” and “Why’s” of the evolution of social behavior in insects. This involves asking questions about the genetic and molecular basis of social traits, and how such traits evolved.
Our three-pronged research approach involves

1. Identifying the causal genes and gene networks affecting behavior through quantitative genetic analysis, global transcriptional profiling, systems biology, and next-generation sequencing
2. Studying the evolutionary genomics of social insects to identify genes and regulatory sequences experiencing natural selection, and their association with behavioural traits.
3. Establish links between mutations in genes that affect social traits with differences in individual and colony fitness in the field.

In addition to charting the genotype-phenotype map in the honey bee, there are several interesting prospects for testing the hypotheses developed from our honey bee work to the primitively social sweat bees, which we plan on developing genomic resources for.

Thank you for visiting our webpage. Please check out the Lab News link for the latest updates on our research.

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