Search results for "Social grooming"
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Social immunity and the evolution of group living in insects
2015
The evolution of group living requires that individuals limit the inherent risks of parasite infection. To this end, group living insects have developed a unique capability of mounting collective anti-parasite defences, such as allogrooming and corpse removal from the nest. Over the last 20 years, this phenomenon (called social immunity) was mostly studied in eusocial insects, with results emphasizing its importance in derived social systems. However, the role of social immunity in the early evolution of group living remains unclear. Here, I investigate this topic by first presenting the definitions of social immunity and discussing their applications across social systems. I then provide a…
Influences of Relatedness, Food Deprivation, and Sex on Adult Behaviors in the Group-living Insect Forficula auricularia
2014
The evolution of group living is generally associated with the emergence of social behaviors that ensure fitness benefits to group members. However, the expression of these behaviors may depend on group composition, which can vary over time with respect to sex, starvation status, and relatedness. Here, we investigated (1) whether adults of the group-living European earwig, Forficula auricularia, show cooperative behaviors toward conspecifics and (2) whether sex, food availability, and relatedness shape the nature and frequency of these behaviors. We conducted a full-factorial experiment using 108 unisexual pairs of adults, in which we manipulated these three factors and video-recorded the e…