Social arthropods such as termites, ants, and bees are among others the most successful
animal groups on earth. However, social arthropods face an elevated risk of infections due …

Understanding the role of genetic and nongenetic variants in modulating phenotypes is
central to our knowledge of adaptive responses to local conditions and environmental …

Variation in DNA methylation patterns among genes, individuals, and populations appears
to be highly variable among taxa, but our understanding of the functional significance of this …

Across several animal taxa, the evolution of sociality involves a suite of characteristics, a
“social syndrome,” that includes cooperative breeding, reproductive skew, primary female …

Social spiders have remarkably low species-wide genetic diversities, potentially increasing
the relative importance of microbial symbionts for host fitness. Here we explore the bacterial …

The ratio of nonsynonymous over synonymous sequence divergence, d N/d S, is a widely
used estimate of the nonsynonymous over synonymous fixation rate ratio ω, which …

Host–symbiont interactions may form obligatory or facultative associations that are context
dependent. Long-term studies on microbiome composition from wild populations should …

Group living animals invariably risk resource competition. Cooperation in foraging, however,
may benefit individuals in groups by facilitating an increase in dietary niche. To test this, we …

Island populations often experience different ecological and demographic conditions than
their counterparts on the continent, resulting in divergent evolutionary forces affecting their …

Understanding how genetic and ecological effects can interact to shape genetic loads within
and across local populations is key to understanding ongoing persistence of systems that …