Eusociality
Eusociality (from Ancient Greek, Greek εὖ ''eu'' "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative Offspring, brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society which are sometimes referred to as 'castes'. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform at least one behavior characteristic of individuals in another caste. Eusocial colonies can be viewed as superorganisms. Eusociality exists in certain insects, crustaceans, and mammals. It is mostly observed and studied in the Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps) and in Blattodea (termites). A colony has caste differences: queens and reproductive males ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Halictinae
Within the insect order Hymenoptera, the Halictinae are the largest, most diverse, and most recently diverged of the four Halictidae, halictid subfamilies. They comprise over 2400 bee species belonging to the five taxonomic Tribe (biology), tribes Augochlorini, Thrinchostomini, Caenohalictini, Sphecodini, and Halictini, which some entomology, entomologists alternatively organize into the two tribes Augochlorini and Halictini. The subfamily Halictinae also belongs to the hymenopteran monophyletic clade Aculeata, whose members are characterized by the possession of a modified ovipositor in the form of a venomous sting for predator and prey defense. Including all eusociality, eusocial and kleptoparasitism, cleptoparasitic Halictidae taxa, these small bees are pollen feeders who mass provisioning, mass provision their young and exhibit a broad spectrum of behavioral social polymorphism (biology), polymorphies, ranging from solitary nesting to obligate eusociality. Estimated from th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sociality
Sociality is the degree to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in social groups (gregariousness) and form cooperative societies. Sociality is a survival response to evolutionary pressures. For example, when a mother wasp stays near her larvae in the nest, parasites are less likely to eat the larvae. Biologists suspect that pressures from parasites and other predators selected this behavior in wasps of the family Vespidae. This wasp behaviour evidences the most fundamental characteristic of animal sociality: parental investment. Parental investment is any expenditure of resources (time, energy, social capital) to benefit one's offspring. Parental investment detracts from a parent's capacity to invest in future reproduction and aid to kin (including other offspring). An animal that cares for its young but shows no other sociality traits is said to be ''subsocial''. An animal that exhibits a high degree of sociality is called a ''social animal''. The highe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Synalpheus Regalis
''Synalpheus regalis'' is a species of snapping shrimp that commonly live in sponges in the coral reefs along the tropical West Atlantic. They form a prominent component of the diverse marine cryptofauna of the region. For the span of their entire lives, they live in the internal canals of the host sponge, using it as a food resource and shelter. It has been shown that colonies contain over 300 individuals, but only one reproductive female. Also, larger colony members, most of which apparently never breed, defend the colony against heterospecific intruders. This evidence points towards the first known case of eusociality in a marine animal. The species name "regalis" comes from the Latin ''regalis'' which means royal. This likely stems from the structural hierarchy of the colonies in which only a single female produces all of the offspring. Taxonomy ''Synalpheus regalis'' is a member of the genus ''Synalpheus'', the second largest genus in the snapping shrimp family ( Alpheid ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Termite
Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes ( eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blattodea (along with cockroaches). Termites were once classified in a separate order from cockroaches, but recent phylogenetic studies indicate that they evolved from cockroaches, as they are deeply nested within the group, and the sister group to wood eating cockroaches of the genus '' Cryptocercus''. Previous estimates suggested the divergence took place during the Jurassic or Triassic. More recent estimates suggest that they have an origin during the Late Jurassic, with the first fossil records in the Early Cretaceous. About 3,106 species are currently described, with a few hundred more left to be described. Although these insects are often called "white ants", they are not ants, and are not closely related to ants. Like ants and some ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Naked Mole-rat
The naked mole-rat (''Heterocephalus glaber''), also known as the sand puppy, is a burrowing rodent native to the Horn of Africa and parts of Kenya, notably in Somali regions. It is closely related to the blesmols and is the only species in the genus ''Heterocephalus''. The naked mole-rat exhibits a highly unusual set of physiological and behavioral traits that allow it to thrive in a harsh underground environment; most notably its being the only mammalian thermoconformer with an almost entirely ectothermic (cold-blooded) form of body temperature regulation, as well as exhibiting a complex social structure split between reproductive and non-reproductive castes, making it and the closely-related Damaraland mole-rat (''Fukomys damarensis'') the only widely recognized examples of eusociality (the highest classification of sociality) in mammals. The naked mole-rat lacks pain sensitivity in its skin, and has very low metabolic and respiratory rates. It is also remarkable for its ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hymenoptera
Hymenoptera is a large order of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. Over 150,000 living species of Hymenoptera have been described, in addition to over 2,000 extinct ones. Many of the species are parasitic. Females typically have a special ovipositor for inserting eggs into hosts or places that are otherwise inaccessible. This ovipositor is often modified into a stinger. The young develop through holometabolism (complete metamorphosis)—that is, they have a wormlike larval stage and an inactive pupal stage before they mature. Etymology The name Hymenoptera refers to the wings of the insects, but the original derivation is ambiguous. All references agree that the derivation involves the Ancient Greek πτερόν (''pteron'') for wing. The Ancient Greek ὑμήν (''hymen'') for membrane provides a plausible etymology for the term because species in this order have membranous wings. However, a key characteristic of this order is that the hindwings are co ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Damaraland Mole-rat
The Damaraland mole-rat (''Fukomys damarensis''), Damara mole rat or Damaraland blesmol, is a burrowing rodent found in southern Africa. Along with the smaller, less hairy, naked mole rat, it is a species of eusocial mammal. Description Like other blesmols, the Damaraland mole-rat has a cylindrical body with short, stout limbs, large feet, and a conical head. It is also similar in size to most other African mole-rats, having a head-body length of , with a short, , tail, and weighing between . There are no external ears, and the blue-coloured eyes are tiny with thick eyelids. The incisor teeth are large and prominent, with flaps of skin behind them to prevent soil from falling into the throat while the animal is using them to dig. The fur is short and thick, and varies from fawn to almost black, with shades of brown being most common. There is always a white patch on the top of the head, although its exact shape varies, and there may also be additional blotches of white fur els ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wasp
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. The wasps do not constitute a clade, a complete natural group with a single ancestor, as bees and ants are deeply nested within the wasps, having evolved from wasp ancestors. Wasps that are members of the clade Aculeata can Stinger, sting their prey. The most commonly known wasps, such as yellowjackets and hornets, are in the family Vespidae and are Eusociality, eusocial, living together in a nest with an egg-laying queen and non-reproducing workers. Eusociality is favoured by the unusual haplodiploid system of sex-determination system, sex determination in Hymenoptera, as it makes sisters exceptionally closely related to each other. However, the majority of wasp species are solitary, with each adult female living and breeding independently ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Suzanne Batra
Suzanne Wellington Tubby Batra (born December 15, 1937) is an American entomologist best known for her work on the classification of insect societies and for coining the term eusociality. Batra was born in New York City where her father Roger W. Tubby was a journalist and secretary to President Truman, later serving in the United Nations as US Ambassador during the Kennedy period. At a young age, she was exposed to outdoor life, natural history, fishing and hunting especially after the family moved to the Adirondacks. She graduated from Saranac Lake (New York) High School in 1956 and received a Bachelor of Arts in zoology from Swarthmore College in 1960. She married her botany professor Lekh R. Batra (1929–1999) and continued her studies in the University of Kansas under Charles D. Michener. She received a PhD in 1964 for studies on sociobiology of sweat bees. She studied solitary bees in the family Colletidae, including on the chemistry of their waterproof nest-cell linings ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Superorganism
A superorganism or supraorganism is a group of synergetically interacting organisms of the same species. A community of synergetically interacting organisms of different species is called a holobiont. Concept The term superorganism is used most often to describe a social unit of eusocial animals, where division of labour is highly specialised and where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods. Ants are the best-known example of such a superorganism. A superorganism can be defined as "a collection of agents which can act in concert to produce phenomena governed by the collective", phenomena being any activity "the hive wants" such as ants collecting food and avoiding predators, or bees choosing a new nest site. In challenging environments, micro organisms collaborate and evolve together to process unlikely sources of nutrients such as methane. This process called syntrophy ("eating together") might be linked to the evolution of eukaryote cells an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Apoidea
The superfamily Apoidea is a major group within the Hymenoptera, which includes two traditionally recognized lineages, the "sphecoid" wasps, and the bees. Molecular phylogeny demonstrates that the bees arose from within the traditional "Crabronidae", so that grouping is paraphyletic, and this has led to a reclassification to produce monophyletic families.Manuela Sann, Oliver Niehuis, Ralph S. Peters, Christoph Mayer, Alexey Kozlov, Lars Podsiadlowski, Sarah Bank, Karen Meusemann, Bernhard Misof, Christoph Bleidorn and Michael Ohl (2018) Phylogenomic analysis of Apoidea sheds new light on the sister group of bees. ''BMC Evolutionary Biology'' 18:71. doi:10.1186/s12862-018-1155-8 Nomenclature Bees appear in recent classifications to be a specialized lineage of " crabronid" wasps that switched to the use of pollen and nectar as larval food, rather than insect prey; this makes the traditional "Crabronidae" a paraphyletic group. Accordingly, bees and sphecoids are now all grouped toge ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |