Social insect workers. Medical search. Frequent questions

The high-performance computers she uses to track ant behavior sat idle, and only a lab technician-deemed an essential worker-was permitted to tend to the lab's hundreds of black garden ant colonies, each housed in its own plastic tub. (motherjones.com)
That rarely happens, social insect researchers say, and vast colonies of such species are somehow able to limit the spread of contagions. (motherjones.com)
Here, we show (i) that bumble bee workers retain queen-like reproductive traits, being able to mate and produce colonies, underlain by queen-like gene expression, (ii) the social conditions required for worker mating, and (iii) that these abilities may be selected for by early queen-loss in these annual species. (nature.com)
Artificially inseminated workers express the behavior of queens, founding and producing colonies that run through the entire lifecycle. (nature.com)
De-queening of colonies triggers this behavior, suggesting that mated workers might take-over colonies in the wild after queen loss. (nature.com)
Paper wasps and their close relatives are attractive subjects for brain evolution studies: species relationships are well-understood, and wasps vary in social organization from solitary species to some of the largest, most complex animal colonies known. (databasefootball.com)
One of the characteristics of social insect colonies is the division of reproductive efforts. (uni-ulm.de)
Ants are obligately social animals, organized into highly structured colonies containing one or more reproductive queens and a large number of female but reproductively sterile workers. (uvm.edu)
He's testing a 150-year-old theory espoused by Charles Darwin to explain how natural selection shapes traits in the sterile workers of social insect colonies. (fsu.edu)
While the workers provide the foundation of the colony's existence, it is the winged male and female ants that determine a colony's fitness-that is, its ability to produce more ant colonies-and that is the ultimate measure of whether a colony's genes will spread in a population or will wane. (fsu.edu)
Tschinkel wants to find out if the production of male and female ants is affected by changing the proportion of large and small workers in his experimental colonies. (fsu.edu)
This fall, he began manipulating those colonies to alter the proportion of large and small workers. (fsu.edu)
Over the course of the three-year project, which is being funded through a National Science Foundation grant, Tschinkel will determine whether colonies that are populated with primarily large worker ants produce more, fewer or the same number of male and female ants as colonies comprised mostly of small worker ants or unmanipulated colonies. (fsu.edu)
In that case, large- and small-worker colonies will produce fewer males and females. (fsu.edu)
Honey bees are social insects that form colonies (hives), which often consist of more than 10,000 individuals. (fujipress.jp)
6] T. D. Seeley, "The wisdom of the hive: The social physiology of honey bee colonies," Harvard University Press, 1996. (fujipress.jp)
Length: 1/8″ - 3/8″) These are social insects living in colonies in the soil. (masseyservices.com)
The secret is that colonies produce more reproductives- and hence spread more quickly- when they begin life churning out only workers.Â Once they pass a certain size, successful colonies switch abruptly and entirely to reproductives. (scienceblogs.com)
Â By not diverting early resources into males and gynes, a colony builds a stronger worker force and grows more quickly than colonies that trickle out a few reproductives at a time.Â Once a colony switches full-bore into alate production it quickly swamps out the accumulated gradual reproductive efforts of the competition. (scienceblogs.com)
In their seminal paper, Macevicz and Oster predicted that, for most annual insect colonies, a bangâbang strategy should be favoured by selection, i.e. a strategy characterised by an ââergonomic phaseââ with exponential colony growth followed by a ââreproductive phaseââ with all resources invested into the production of sexuals. (scienceblogs.com)
Yet, there is empirical evidence for the simultaneous investment into the production of workers and sexuals in annual colonies (graded control). (scienceblogs.com)
Yellowjackets are social insects that live in colonies and have a caste system that comprises a queen, drones (non-reproducing females), and workers. (a-z-animals.com)
We compared worker behaviour and reproduction before and after removal of queens from monogynous and polygynous colonies of the ant Leptothorax acervorum. (uea.ac.uk)
We found that, in queenless conditions, workers from monogynous colonies were significantly more likely to lay eggs, showed a significantly reduced latency to egg-laying, and laid eggs at a significantly higher rate per capita, than workers from polygynous colonies. (uea.ac.uk)
In addition, before queen removal, workers that laid eggs in queenless conditions across both monogynous and polygynous colonies performed a range of behaviours associated with reproduction at significantly higher rates compared to non-reproductive, control workers. (uea.ac.uk)
Termites are social insects that live in large colonies. (ardentermite.com)
The genus Polistes has a world-wide distribution and in Europe and North America its colonies outnumber all the other social wasps combined. (earthlife.net)
Honey bees are social insects that live in colonies with one queen, a few hundred male drones, and several thousand female workers. (westernpest.com)
Both yellowjacket colonies and honey bee hives consist of a queen, workers, and drones. (mannlakeltd.com)
The alternative of male production by orphaned workers appears to be so inefficient that residual inclusive fitness of orphaned workers might be maximized by indiscriminately merging with neighbouring colonies to increase their reproductive success. (ku.dk)

they tend to be non-volatile and are dispersed by workers across the colony. (wikipedia.org)
This not only removes the cost of developing and maintaining these organs in unmated individuals, but such morphological specializations between queens and workers would also promote efficient division of labor with reduced conflicts within a colony 8 . (nature.com)
Social insects are the insects that live in a colony with a queen and workers like many bees, ants, wasps and termites. (sussex.ac.uk)
Within a colony, the demands of maintaining social dominance may require greater brain investment. (databasefootball.com)
Furthermore, we are studying the mechanisms of regulation of worker reproduction and the question why the queen looses her reproductive dominance at a certain phase of colony development. (uni-ulm.de)
Communication within a social insect colony is thought to rely primarily upon odours (pheromones). (uni-ulm.de)
Yet how individual workers recognise and discriminate amongst relatives within a colony (e.g. full sisters versus half sisters) is currently not known. (uni-ulm.de)
A kin-selection interpretation of insect sociality is given which differs from that of Hamilton in not relying on extraordinarily high relatedness among the members of a colony. (uchicago.edu)
We focused here on the honey bee Apis mellifera , a social insect that relies on a wide range of pheromones to ensure colony cohesion. (jneurosci.org)
All of the insects in the colony are specialists in what they do: Workers forage and construct the mound, while soldiers defend it from invaders. (the-scientist.com)
As with other social insects, the leaf-cutter ants divide the tasks needed to maintain the colony among them. (asm.org)
Florida State University biologist Walter Tschinkel wants to know if there are benefits to nature's practice of producing large and small workers in a colony of fire ants. (fsu.edu)
Darwin suggested that workers' traits are selected through the reproductive effectiveness of the colony as a whole. (fsu.edu)
The largest fire ant workers in a colony are four to five times bigger than the smallest workers, a condition called polymorphism. (fsu.edu)
Spatial distribution of ant workers and, notably their aggregation/segregation behaviour, is a key-element of the colony social organization contributing to the efficiency of task performance and division of labour. (researchgate.net)
Among worker bees, only forager bees collect food, and success in finding food directly influences colony survival. (fujipress.jp)
The hives basically dwindle over time as bees leave the colony and, ah, don't return which is very unusual for a social insect like the honeybee because they are very colony oriented. (loe.org)
The colony is made up of workers, soldiers and reproductives. (masseyservices.com)
Abstract: Understanding decisions about the allocation of resources into colony growth and reproduction in social insects is one of the challenging issues in sociobiology. (scienceblogs.com)
Using basic calculus, we can show that sufficiently strong negative correlation between colony size and worker efficiency or increasing mortality of workers with increasing colony size will favour the evolution of graded allocation strategies. (scienceblogs.com)
Each worker and queen has a specific role-play in maintaining the colony. (a-z-animals.com)
A male and female that have swarmed from an established colony lose their wings and seek a dark cavity inside where they mate and raise the first group of workers. (ardentermite.com)
Upon maturation, the workers expand the colony and feed the reproductives. (ardentermite.com)
In some species, as the colony becomes larger, supplementary reproductives are produced to lay eggs that become workers. (ardentermite.com)
Once they have put on sufficient weight, they pupate and a week or two later a new wasp emerges - either a worker or a sexual depending on the age of the colony. (earthlife.net)
Termites are social insects, and the activity of a colony is dictated by swarm intelligence. (pestworld.org)
A typical termite colony consists of workers, soldiers, nymphs and reproductive individuals. (pestworld.org)
Workers make up most of the colony. (pestworld.org)
One way in which termites differ from other social insects is that a colony has a primary queen and king who mate for life. (pestworld.org)
Within the same colony, workers have different appearances depending on the job they do: nurses, foragers, soldiers, etc. (espacepourlavie.ca)
Large worker ants indicate an older colony that has been living in the same place for a while. (espacepourlavie.ca)
The colony thrives throughout the summer as the queen produces more and more generations of workers. (mannlakeltd.com)
However, the queen of a yellow jacket colony can easily start a new colony of her own without the assistance of the workers. (mannlakeltd.com)
We show that worker chemical recognition profiles remain similar after queen loss, but rapidly change into a mixed colony Gestalt odour after fusion, consistent with indiscriminate acceptance of alien workers that are no longer aggressive. (ku.dk)
We hypothesize that colony fusion after queen loss might be more widespread, especially in spatially structured populations of social insects where worker reproduction is not profitable. (ku.dk)

Eusocial insects including ants, termites, bees, and social wasps produce pheromones from several types of exocrine gland. (wikipedia.org)
The current guidance on social distancing "rung familiar," Stroeymeyt said, "because I've been seeing it among the ants. (motherjones.com)
As with humans, fending off disease can be a tall order for social insects-a category that includes termites, ants, and many species of bees and wasps. (motherjones.com)
Nests of the Atta genus are characterized by ants of different sizes corresponding to castes of workers, soldiers, reproductives, and "guards. (britannica.com)
Workers in superorganismal species like honey bees and many ants have consequently lost, or retain only vestigial spermathecal structures. (nature.com)
This rather limited menu stands in marked contrast to ants, social insect cousins of paper wasps. (databasefootball.com)
Next up, slave-making ants: those whose workers are stolen from other nests. (scienceblogs.com)
There is a rise in oxidative stress in workers of leafcutter ants treated with fipronil because SOD significantly increased when compared to the control group. (springer.com)
When you look at worker ants from the same species, they often appear so different that they seem like they are two different species. (asm.org)
Worker ants conveniently carry antibiotic-producing Actinobacteria species. (asm.org)
The answer may tell us how natural selection can shape traits in animals that do not themselves reproduce, namely, worker ants. (fsu.edu)
A possible finding will be that the natural proportion of worker sizes in fire ants is optimum,' Tschinkel said. (fsu.edu)
In their social habits they closely resemble the true ants. (freedictionary.org)
There are small and large worker ants. (espacepourlavie.ca)
After a few days, the pale adult emerges from its protective covering, often helped by worker ants. (espacepourlavie.ca)
Trap-jaw ants, with their spring-loaded jaws and powerful stings, are among the fiercest insect predators, but they begin their lives as spiny, hairy, fleshy blobs hanging from the ceiling and walls of an underground nest. (sciencedaily.com)
Therefore, these ants protect their germline through piRNA activity, regardless of ovarian development, age or caste, even in sterile workers often considered the soma of the superorganism. (bvsalud.org)

A recent paper by O'Donnell and Bulova used comparative studies of social insects - paper wasps - to explore how species differences in size, ecology, and behavior relate to brain size and structure. (databasefootball.com)
And if the worker wasps perceive a threat, they'll attack intruders. (howstuffworks.com)
All the social wasps are gathered within the family Vespidae, though not all the genera or species within the Vespidae are social. (earthlife.net)
The Polybiine wasps are a much more diverse group (not all of whom are considered fully social wasps), that produce a wide variety of nests that are really quite attractive. (earthlife.net)
Despite their ability to sting and paralyze prey, adult wasps only eat nectar from flowers or other naturally occurring sugary things like honeydew from aphids and other insects. (whatsthatbug.com)
Another difference between potter and mason wasps and mud daubers is that while the former prefer to provision their nests with caterpillars and other insects, the latter prefers spiders. (whatsthatbug.com)
Dark paper wasps live in a complex social structure with a dominant queen and a well-defined hierarchy. (whatsthatbug.com)

The Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI) at the University of Sussex studies honey bees and other social insects. (sussex.ac.uk)
Our aim is to identify semiochemicals with a function in the regulation of worker reproduction and compare the odour bouquets of queens and different functional worker groups in primitively eusocial sweat bees and in bumblebees. (uni-ulm.de)
When Nieh simulated the strikes of these hunters by pinching worker bees with tweezers, he boosted the number of warning vibrations by 88 times. (scienceblogs.com)
There are no selfish worker bees, no cowardly worker bees, no conflicted worker bees, all traits found within human beings. (commonwealmagazine.org)
Removing the bees and leaving the nest can also result in wax and honey melting and seeping into insulation or other structural materials, attracting more insects as well as rodents. (westernpest.com)
You can easily distinguish honey bees as black and yellow flying insects living in woodlands, orchards, gardens, and other areas where flowering plants grow. (mannlakeltd.com)
Like yellow jacket bees, honey bees are social insects that work in a coordinated manner to maintain their nest or hive. (mannlakeltd.com)
Queen bees can live up to two years or more, whereas workers only live between 15 and 200 days, depending on the season. (mannlakeltd.com)
They're social insects that build nests much like honey bees do. (mannlakeltd.com)
Like honey bees, yellow jacket bees are black and yellow flying insects. (mannlakeltd.com)
However, their brighter colors and thin waists set them apart from bees and other similar insects. (mannlakeltd.com)
On the contrary, honey bee queens depend on their worker bees to live and start a new swarm. (mannlakeltd.com)
Honey bees and yellow jacket bees are both stinging insects. (mannlakeltd.com)

Chemical communication in insects is social signalling between insects of the same or different species, using chemicals. (wikipedia.org)
These results challenge the idea of lifetime worker unmatedness in superorganisms, and provide an exciting new tool for the conservation of endangered bumble bee species. (nature.com)
Here, using a series of integrated experiments, we show that bumble bee workers of multiple species retain a functional spermatheca, enabling them to produce diploid offspring. (nature.com)
Not only do these results challenge the concept of lifetime unmatedness of developmentally-determined workers in superorganisms, but they provide a novel tool for the conservation of endangered bumble bee species. (nature.com)
Among social species, nest mates are divided among behaviorally distinct reproductive queens and sterile workers. (databasefootball.com)
Different ant species get their protein from diverse insect prey, bird droppings, and even freshly cut leaves. (databasefootball.com)
However, solitary species make greater mushroom body investment than their social relatives. (databasefootball.com)
S. invicta is the second social insect species (after the honeybee) and the first ant species for which a large microarray has become available. (europa.eu)
Consequently, such a coding scheme may not be adapted for species that use a wide range of different pheromones (often including many different components), such as social insects. (jneurosci.org)
Until now, however, this theoretical view has not been tested systematically in any insect species. (jneurosci.org)
turn to species other than our own-specifically, to those social insects whose very existence depends on the unselfish behavior of many individuals within the species. (commonwealmagazine.org)
BUT WHILE Wilson makes common cause with many of today's religious humanitarians, even if he feels they aren't truly altruistic, he lambasts modern economists who valorize selfishness and posit a new species, Homo economicus , "rational, calculating materialists with no social or moral connections with other human beings" who nevertheless produce the greatest economic good for all. (commonwealmagazine.org)
As the example of social insects suggests, such a species would not result in the success of a society even if such individuals did exist. (commonwealmagazine.org)
In polymorphic species, specialized worker castes notably differ in their intrinsic aggregation behaviour. (researchgate.net)
any one of numerous species of social pseudoneuropterous insects of the genus Termes . (freedictionary.org)
Nymphs are young termites and, in some species, take on the duties of worker termites. (pestworld.org)

If you see flying insects inside your house during the springtime, they are most likely subterranean termites. (ardentermite.com)
Worker termites are most likely to be found in infested wood. (pestworld.org)

Workers deposit waste and dead bodies outside the nests. (motherjones.com)
They build elaborate nests with many chambers, each one for one egg and an insect or two to eat. (whatsthatbug.com)

The insects are "living in very confined environments where there's a lot of microbial load," said Rebeca Rosengaus, a behavioral ecologist who studies social insect behavior at Northeastern University in Boston. (motherjones.com)
Others, including simple immunization-like behavior and forms of insect social distancing, can seem eerily familiar. (motherjones.com)
Thus, it provides an approach which could serve as the basis for a general and comprehensive theory of social behavior. (uchicago.edu)
Current projects include: 1) quantifying gene flow across the behavioral transition zone, 2) measuring the types and strength of natural selection acting on queen behavior, both between regions and within the transition zone, and 3) the effects of social behavior on queen body size, morphology, and physiology. (uvm.edu)
The evolutionary significance of social behavior remains one of the more intriguing questions in biology. (frontiersin.org)
While subsequent theory has largely resolved Darwin's 'difficulty', explaining the details of the extraordinary diversity of social behavior across the full spectrum of organisms remains an enduring challenge. (frontiersin.org)
Social Evolution will provide a forum for this research by publishing a variety of article styles that consider the evolution of social behavior, and the evolution of the underlying mechanisms that facilitate social behavior. (frontiersin.org)
This research provides foundational knowledge which enables future research questions on developmental trajectories, such as when an individual might switch from developing into a worker to developing into a queen," says Adrian Smith, a research assistant professor at NC State University and head of the Evolutionary Biology & Behavior Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. (sciencedaily.com)
Aug. 28, 2023 An international research team reports that, given the same genetic makeup, individual behavior alone determines whether or not an individual in a social group will contract a disease. (sciencedaily.com)

While Darwin recognized that the sterile workers of social insects represents a difficulty for his theory, he regarded it as no greater than that of any other striking organismic feature. (frontiersin.org)

This lack of a non-reproductive worker class disqualifies B.junceus from being termed a eusocial insect . (earthlife.net)

An index of the liklihood that altruism will occur in different social and ecological situations. (uchicago.edu)
A synthesis of current ideas on the evolution of insect sociality shows how mutualism, parental manipulation, and kin selection could all have operated, either in conjunction or independently, to produce extreme altruism (worker sterility) starting with different kinds of primitice groups. (uchicago.edu)
Having dismissed religion as a ground of true human altruism, in his later chapters Wilson proposes complex social engineering modeled on social insects to create a more human society. (commonwealmagazine.org)
The cynic might well ask why invisibly manipulating human beings into the altruism of social insects is better than just promising them heaven. (commonwealmagazine.org)

Lifetime mating commitment by queens, pre-imaginal caste determination and lifetime unmatedness of workers are key features of these animal societies. (nature.com)

Interestingly, nest-bound paper wasp queens have slightly reduced peripheral visual processing brain regions compared to their foraging, light-exposed workers. (databasefootball.com)
Queens, stay-at-home moms that are reproductively active and socially dominant, typically have a greater investment in the higher processing brain regions (mushroom bodies) than their workers. (databasefootball.com)
and if the donor is particularly efficient at giving aid or if the beneficiary is particularly efficient at using it, as in the case of the specialized workers and queens of social insects, or if both situation obtain. (uchicago.edu)
Females thus occur in distinct castes (e.g. workers and queens). (europa.eu)
In many eusocial Hymenoptera, workers lay eggs only in queenless conditions following the death of the queen or queens. (uea.ac.uk)
These insects are very abundant in tropical countries, and form large and complex communities consisting of numerous asexual workers of one or more kinds, of large-headed asexual individuals called soldiers, of one or more queens (or fertile females) often having the body enormously distended by the eggs, and, at certain seasons of numerous winged males, together with the larvae and pupae of each kind in various stages of development. (freedictionary.org)
Like the rest of the Social Insects , the life history involves a number of sterile female workers raising a generation of sexually active sisters - for one or a few queens/mothers. (earthlife.net)
Workers have no wings, while Queens lose theirs after mating. (espacepourlavie.ca)
Ant queens and workers vary in fecundity and lifespan, which are enhanced and extended in queens. (bvsalud.org)
Ant queens live and reproduce for years, so that they need to protect their germline from transposable element (TE) activity, which may be redundant in short-lived, often sterile workers. (bvsalud.org)

There are three groups of individuals or castes: reproductives, workers, and soldiers. (ardentermite.com)

They are a member of a large order of insects known as Hymenoptera. (a-z-animals.com)

Biologist E.O. Wilson's classic 1971 survey of the field, "The Insect Societies," does not even list "disease," "pathogen," "bacteria," or "virus" in its index. (motherjones.com)
The applied research is aimed at helping the honey bee and beekeepers, whilst the basic research studies how insect societies function. (sussex.ac.uk)

The foraging workers feed immature workers, reproductives, and soldiers with food materials from their mouths and anuses. (ardentermite.com)

A comprehensive, multi-author treatise on the social insects of the world, with some auxiliary attention to such adjacent topics as subsocial insects and social arachnids. (credoreference.com)
They are scavengers and carnivores known to feed on other insects and arachnids. (a-z-animals.com)

Importantly, Social Evolution aims to promote conceptual advances that go beyond taxonomic boundaries, and thus will publish articles from across the taxonomic spectrum, from bacteria, through invertebrates, to vertebrates. (frontiersin.org)
Poxviridae consists of 2 subfamilies: Chordopoxvirinae, which infects vertebrates, and Entomopoxvirinae, which infects insects. (medscape.com)

The Insects: An Outline of Entomology (3rd ed. (wikipedia.org)

If you or your tenants are finding strange insect bites or skin rashes, you may have bed bugs. (ardentermite.com)
The family does not use mosquito nets, and he reported occasional insect bites. (cdc.gov)
Use Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellent to protect yourself and your family from mosquito bites. (cdc.gov)

Pheromones are of two main kinds: primer pheromones, which generate a long-duration change in the insect that receives them, or releaser pheromones, which cause an immediate change in behaviour. (wikipedia.org)
Pest insects such as fruit moths are attracted by sex pheromones, allowing farmers to evaluate pest levels, and if need be to provide sufficient pheromone to disrupt mating. (wikipedia.org)
In contrast, the smell of pheromones from a bee's sting gland suggests that other workers have been forced to defend themselves but doesn't actually involve physical contact. (scienceblogs.com)
Neural coding of pheromones has been intensively studied in insects with a particular focus on sex pheromones. (jneurosci.org)
We show that while queen mandibular pheromone is processed by l-ALT (lateral antennal lobe tract) neurons and brood pheromone is mainly processed by m-ALT (median antennal lobe tract) neurons, worker pheromones induce redundant activity in both pathways. (jneurosci.org)
Neural coding and processing of pheromone information have been studied intensively in insects, strongly focusing on sex pheromones. (jneurosci.org)

They're actually disappearing as if the adult workers, the foragers, are going out and not remembering how to get home. (loe.org)

While larvae depend on the fungus, workers also feed on plant sap. (britannica.com)
When they hatch, the larvae are fed progressively by the workers for several weeks. (earthlife.net)
By late July, 200 workers may have been raised, but mortality (death) mostly as a result of predation, means that in most cases far fewer workers than this are available to start raising the sexual larvae. (earthlife.net)
By this time their hunger will have disrupted the nest, as they will be preventing any further larvae from being fed by eating all the food collected by the workers. (earthlife.net)

I use the tools of ecology, ethology, and genetics to understand how social life affects the evolution and dynamics of ant populations, primarily in the southwestern and southern US. (uvm.edu)
Populations in the age group 15-45 years living in remote rural areas are the most affected, leading to economic loss and social misery. (who.int)
5. Implementation of this strategy should reduce morbidity and mortality due to human African trypanosomiasis and improve the economic and social status of the affected populations. (who.int)

These 'future reproductive' workers also significantly reduced their rates of brood care following queen removal. (uea.ac.uk)
These findings show that workers under monogyny reproduce more readily in queenless conditions than workers under polygyny, and that would-be reproductive workers alter their behaviour before they experience the opportunity for future reproduction. (uea.ac.uk)

Media workers of Atta sexdens (C. Linnaeus) were exposed to the insecticides for 24 h, 48 h, 72 h and 96 h before their fat bodies were dissected for analysis. (springer.com)
2013 ). Mg1-complex was tested in workers of Atta sexdens (C. Linnaeus) and has been proved to control them in bioassays (Oliveira 2012 ). (springer.com)

Division of labor among social insects maximizes efficiency to ensure that the royal genes make it to the next generation. (the-scientist.com)

At the end of its larval life, the insect spins a long, cylindrical, cream-coloured or beige cocoon. (espacepourlavie.ca)
The number of larval stages in insects can be variable, however the new study finds that trap-jaw ant workers go through three stages of larval development. (sciencedaily.com)

Mostly, oviposition is limited to the queen while workers are engaged in brood care and other non-reproductive activities. (uni-ulm.de)
Using optophysiological recordings of projection neurons, we compared the responses of these two pathways to 27 known honey bee pheromonal compounds emitted by the brood, the workers, and the queen. (jneurosci.org)
For the first month, the queen stays underground tending to the garden while she waits for her workers to mature. (asm.org)
Embedded in the existence of a highly structured organization is the common-but erroneous-belief of a social leader such as the queen centralizing information and issuing commands to workers. (researchgate.net)
The queen can grow to a maximum length of about 0.75 inches, while workers average about 0.47 inches. (a-z-animals.com)

One of the only other examples is the Pharaoh's ant, which uses a repellent pheromone to discourage other workers from heading down fruitless paths. (scienceblogs.com)

Nocturnality evolved independently in the Southeast Asian social wasp genus Provespa , inviting future brain structure comparisons. (databasefootball.com)
In the Atta genus , Carvalho (1972) and Wilson (1980a, 1980b) found unmistakable evidences of the existence of polyethism - division of labor - among workers according to age and body size. (bvsalud.org)

Inclusive fitness, because it includes the effects of all selfish and social traits on the reproductice value of an individual, is capable of evaluating the selective significance (biological function) of any social act, whether selfish, altruistic, reciprocal, cooperative, or destructive in nature. (uchicago.edu)

These chemicals may be volatile, to be detected at a distance by other insects' sense of smell, or non-volatile, to be detected on an insect's cuticle by other insects' sense of taste. (wikipedia.org)
Why insects are successful] What are an insect's two ways to escape adverse conditions? (cobocards.com)

They're social insects, found in temperate areas across North America. (howstuffworks.com)

In these cases, the attacker's behaviour didn't change but the victim produced around 43 times more stop signals back at the hive and sent fewer of her fellow workers to the site of the attack. (scienceblogs.com)
They therefore suggest that workers adaptively modulate their reproductive behaviour as a function of the likelihood of opportunities for direct reproduction arising, and that workers' behaviour is affected by the ability to gain direct fitness even when reproduction is currently not occurring. (uea.ac.uk)

An example of a social Polybiine paper wasp is the South American Myschocyttarus drewseni . (earthlife.net)

He thought it was an insect bite. (cdc.gov)

The harvested baits are taken into the nest, thus contaminating the fungus garden and allegedly also the workers when they are handling the fungus, which causes their eventual death within 4 to 5 days (Gallo et al. (springer.com)
Smaller workers care for the brood and farm the gardens while larger workers forage for leaves and maintain the nest. (asm.org)
In turn, these recruited workers feed at the source and return to the nest reinforcing the foraging trail (d). (researchgate.net)

These signals were identified decades ago, but scientists originally interpreted them as a begging call, intended to cadge some food of another worker. (scienceblogs.com)
It seems like a strange conclusion, when you consider that the signals never actually prompt workers to exchange food. (scienceblogs.com)
The antennae of the workers are also used for touching and feeling the larva at feeding time and during transportation, as well as for finding food sources. (espacepourlavie.ca)

The evolution of a reproductive division of Labor in insects probably involved differences in reproductive capacity among adults in primitively social groups of relatives, making it profitable, in terms of inclusive fitness, for some (namely, the reproductively inferior individuals) to become altruistic helpers. (uchicago.edu)
Although both insects look identical at first glance, many key differences distinguish them from the other. (mannlakeltd.com)

Social Evolution takes a broad interpretation of the discipline - to understand the evolution of those social behaviors that have positive fitness consequences for individuals other than the actor, drawing on insights from the range of social organizations variously described as subsociality, communal and cooperative breeding, primitive eusociality, and advanced eusociality. (frontiersin.org)

and in the brai n of (equally old) foragers and brood care workers. (europa.eu)

Quartz, a type of crystalline silica, is the second most abundant mineral in the earth's crust and workers across a wide range of occupations and industries are exposed to silica-containing dusts. (cdc.gov)

Observers of social insects have long known that the animals keep their homes meticulously clean. (motherjones.com)
The bacterium has been found in aquatic environments, animals, and insects. (cdc.gov)

Why insects are successful] What do wings help an insect to do? (cobocards.com)

In addition to the use of means such as making sounds, generating light, and touch for communication, a wide range of insects have evolved chemical signals, semiochemicals. (wikipedia.org)

We demonstrate through a series of behavioral experiments that workers are attractive to males and have the ability to mate if they have experienced social isolation. (nature.com)

Anatomy6

Organisms36

Diseases11

Chemicals and Drugs17

Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment21

Psychiatry and Psychology53

Phenomena and Processes25

Disciplines and Occupations4

Anthropology, Education, Sociology and Social Phenomena31

Technology, Industry, Agriculture17

Humanities3

Information Science12

Named Groups5

Health Care67

Geographicals8

Colonies30

Colony35

Ants17

Wasps7

Bees13

Species16

Termites2

Nests2

Behavior9

Sterile workers of social1

Eusocial insect1

Altruism4

Caste1

Queens10

Castes1

Hymenoptera1

Societies2

Reproductives1

Arachnids2

Vertebrates2

Entomology1

Bites3

Pheromones6

Adult1

Larvae4

Populations3

Reproductive workers2

Linnaeus2

Genes1

Larval2

Queen5

Repellent1

Genus2

Traits1

Insect's2

North America1

Behaviour2

Wasp1

Bite1

Nest3

Food3

Differences2

Variously1

Brood care1

Abundant1

Animals2

Wings1

Signals1

Behavioral1