Table 3. Gene expression stability values of the five reference genes in forager, nurse, and integration of two tasks calculated by BestKeeper.

	Forager					Nurse					Forager + Nursed
Ranking	Gene	GM (Cq) a	SD b	CD (R2) c	P value	Gene	GM (Cq)	SD	CD (R2)	P value	Gene	GM (Cq)	SD	CD (R2)	P value
1	tbp	30.49	1.53	0.978	0.001	tbp	27.13	0.77	0.301	0.341	tbp	26.93	0.86	0.192	0.368
2	rpS18	21.44	2.71	0.999	0.001	gapdh	21.97	1.8	0.937	0.001	gapdh	22.42	1.67	0.93	0.001
3	gapdh	23.71	2.73	0.981	0.001	rpS18	19.78	2.55	0.956	0.001	rpS18	20.2	2.34	0.944	0.001
4	rpL32	23.38	3.7	0.991	0.001	rpL32	22.16	3.29	0.965	0.001	rpL32	22.54	3.11	0.952	0.001

^a SM refers to the geometric mean of C_q value

^b SD indicates the standard deviation of C_q value

^c CD means Coefficient of determination value

^d Raw data from foragers and nurses were combined, and the expression stabilities of each genes were calculated with BestKeeper.