Highlights•Virgin females of the social spider S. dumicola provide extreme allomaternal
care.•Virgin females and mothers show high overlap in task participation.•Virgin females …

One of the benefits of cooperative hunting may be that predators can subdue larger prey. In
spiders, cooperative, social species can capture prey many times larger than an individual …

Highlights•Sociality is rare in spiders and is not associated with great ecological
success.•Sociality imposes a series of novel selection pressures on spiders.•Spiders show …

Epiphytes are a unique group of plants that live nonparasitically on other plants (“hosts”) and
constitute approximately one-fifth of Neotropical vascular plant diversity. However, the …

Sociality in spiders has evolved independently multiple times, resulting in convergently
evolved cooperative breeding and prey capture. In all social spiders, prey is captured by …

1.1 Animal communities and cooperation Most animal species live solitarily, as the potential
for conflict with conspecifics over limited environmental resources or mating partners is high …

Biological invasions occur when a non-native species establishes and proliferates in an
ecosystem, often resulting in detrimental impacts on the environment, local economy and in …