Social immunity, which describes how individual behaviors of group members effectively
reduce disease and parasite transmission at the colony level, is an emerging field in social …

Publisher Summary This chapter compares collective decisions in hives and in ant nests by
relating the properties of recruiting signals to the foraging strategies displayed by these two …

Collective phenomena in animal groups have attracted much attention in the last years,
becoming one of the hottest topics in ethology. There are various reasons for this. On the …

In creatures as different as crickets and scorpions, mole rats and elephants, there exists an
overlooked channel of communication: signals transmitted as vibrations through a solid …

Division of labor is ubiquitous in biological systems, as evidenced by various forms of
complex task specialization observed in both animal societies and multicellular organisms …

The stingless bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini) have evolved sophisticated
communication systems that allow foragers to recruit nestmates to good resources. Over the …

It is not widely recognized that natural selection has produced adaptive units at the level of
groups. Multilevel selection theory shows that groups can evolve a high level of functional …

Vibrations and sounds, collectively called vibroacoustics, play significant roles in intracolony
communication in termites, social wasps, ants, and social bees. Modalities of vibroacoustic …

Social insects exhibit coordinated behaviour without central control. Local interactions
among individuals determine their behaviour and regulate the activity of the colony …

Stingless bees (Hymenoptera, Apidae, Meliponini) live in populous permanent colonies and
face the same problem as other foraging social insects: how to coordinate the worker's …