Search results for "sociality"
showing 10 items of 84 documents
The evolutionary dynamics of adaptive virginity, sex-allocation, and altruistic helping in haplodiploid animals
2017
In haplodiploids, females can produce sons from unfertilized eggs without mating. However, virgin reproduction is usually considered to be a result of a failure to mate, rather than an adaptation. Here, we build an analytical model for evolution of virgin reproduction, sex-allocation, and altruistic female helping in haplodiploid taxa. We show that when mating is costly (e.g., when mating increases predation risk), virginity can evolve as an adaptive female reproductive strategy. Furthermore, adaptive virginity results in strongly divergent sex-ratios in mated and virgin queen nests ("split sex ratios"), which promotes the evolution of altruistic helping by daughters in mated queen nests. H…
Social flexibility and social evolution in mammals: a case study of the African striped mouse (Rhabdomys pumilio)
2011
Environmental change poses challenges to many organisms. The resilience of a species to such change depends on its ability to respond adaptively. Social flexibility is such an adaptive response, whereby individuals of both sexes change their reproductive tactics facultatively in response to fluctuating environmental conditions, leading to changes in the social system. Social flexibility focuses on individual flexibility, and provides a unique opportunity to study both the ultimate and proximate causes of sociality by comparing between solitary and group-living individuals of the same population: why do animals form groups and how is group-living regulated by the environment and the neuro-en…
Mixed company : a framework for understanding the composition and organization of mixed‐species animal groups
2020
Mixed‐species animal groups (MSGs) are widely acknowledged to increase predator avoidance and foraging efficiency, among other benefits, and thereby increase participants' fitness. Diversity in MSG composition ranges from two to 70 species of very similar or completely different phenotypes. Yet consistency in organization is also observable in that one or a few species usually have disproportionate importance for MSG formation and/or maintenance. We propose a two‐dimensional framework for understanding this diversity and consistency, concentrating on the types of interactions possible between two individuals, usually of different species. One axis represents the similarity of benefit types …
How to escape from insect egg parasitoids : a review of potential factors explaining parasitoid absence across the Insecta
2020
The egg is the first life stage directly exposed to the environment in oviparous animals, including many vertebrates and most arthropods. Eggs are vulnerable and prone to mortality risks. In arthropods, one of the most common egg mortality factors is attack from parasitoids. Yet, parasitoids that attack the egg stage are absent in more than half of all insect (sub)orders. In this review, we explore possible causes explaining why eggs of some insect taxa are not parasitized. Many insect (sub)orders that are not attacked by egg parasitoids lack herbivorous species, with some notable exceptions. Factors we consider to have led to escape from egg parasitism are parental egg care, rapid egg deve…
Genetics and Evolution of Social Behavior in Insects
2017
The study of insect social behavior has offered tremendous insight into the molecular mechanisms mediating behavioral and phenotypic plasticity. Genomic applications to the study of eusocial insect species, in particular, have led to several hypotheses for the processes underlying the molecular evolution of behavior. Advances in understanding the genetic control of social organization have also been made, suggesting an important role for supergenes in the evolution of divergent behavioral phenotypes. Intensive study of social phenotypes across species has revealed that behavior and caste are controlled by an interaction between genetic and environmentally mediated effects and, further, tha…
Transmission of mutualistic bacteria in social and gregarious insects
2018
Symbiotic microbes can confer a range of benefits to social, sub-social, and gregarious insects that include contributions to nutrition, digestion, and defense. Transmission of beneficial symbionts to the next generation in these insects sometimes occurs transovarially as in many solitary insects, but primarily through social contact such as coprophagy in gregarious taxa, and trophallaxis in eusocial insects. While these behaviors benefit reliable transmission of multi-microbial assemblages, they may also come at the cost of inviting the spread of parasites and pathogens. Nonetheless, the overall benefit of social symbiont transmission may be one of several important factors that reinforce …
Social regulation of insulin signaling and the evolution of eusociality in ants
2018
The benefits of being well fed In eusocial insects, the vast majority of individuals sacrifice their reproductive potential to support the reproductive queen. Although this system has evolved repeatedly, there is still much debate surrounding its origin. Working with seven different species of ants, Chandra et al. used a transcriptomic approach to show that a single gene is consistently up-regulated in queens. This gene seems to confer reproductive status through integration with increased nutrition. In a clonal ant, larval signals disrupt this gene up-regulation, destabilizing the division of reproductive labor. Increasing levels of the associated peptide override these larval signals and …
Back to the roots: the importance of using simple insect societies to understand the molecular basis of complex social life
2018
The evolutionary trajectories toward insect eusociality come in two broad forms. In species like wasps, bees, and ants, the first helpers remained at the nest primarily to help with brood care. In species like aphids and termites, on the other hand, nest defense was initially the primary ecological driving force. To better understand the molecular basis of these two alternative evolutionary trajectories, it is therefore important to study the mechanistic basis of brood care and nest defense behavior. So far, most studies have compared morphologically distinct castes in advanced eusocial species of ants, bees, wasps, and termites. However, the interpretation of such comparisons is limited by…
Dynamic longitudinal behavior in animals exposed to chronic social defeat stress
2020
AbstractChronic social defeat (CSD) can lead to impairments in social interaction and other behaviors that are supposed to model features of major depressive disorder (MDD). Not all animals subjected to CSD, however, develop these impairments, and maintained social interaction in some animals is widely used as a model for resilience to stress-induced mental dysfunctions. So far, animals have mainly been studied shortly (24 hours and 7 days) after CSD exposure and longitudinal development of behavioral phenotypes in individual animals has been mostly neglected. We have analyzed social interaction and novel object recognition behavior of stressed mice at different time points after CSD and ha…
Social stress during adolescence activates long-term microglia inflammation insult in reward processing nuclei
2018
The experience of social stress during adolescence is associated with higher vulnerability to drug use. Increases in the acquisition of cocaine self-administration, in the escalation of cocaine-seeking behavior, and in the conditioned rewarding effects of cocaine have been observed in rodents exposed to repeated social defeat (RSD). In addition, prolonged or severe stress induces a proinflammatory state with microglial activation and increased cytokine production. The aim of the present work was to describe the long-term effects induced by RSD during adolescence on the neuroinflammatory response and synaptic structure by evaluating different glial and neuronal markers. In addition to an inc…