Nourishment And Evolution In Insect Societies

Nourishment And Evolution In Insect Societies PDF Author: James H Hunt
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Examines the structure and function of insect societies from a nutritional perspective in order to foster a fuller understanding of how their social systems evolved.

Nourishment And Evolution In Insect Societies

Nourishment And Evolution In Insect Societies PDF Author: James H Hunt
Publisher: Westview Press
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
Examines the structure and function of insect societies from a nutritional perspective in order to foster a fuller understanding of how their social systems evolved.

The Convergent Evolution of Agriculture in Humans and Insects

The Convergent Evolution of Agriculture in Humans and Insects PDF Author: Ted R Schultz
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262543206
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Contributors explore common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture resulting from convergent evolution. During the past 12,000 years, agriculture originated in humans as many as twenty-three times, and during the past 65 million years, agriculture also originated in nonhuman animals at least twenty times and in insects at least fifteen times. It is much more likely that these independent origins represent similar solutions to the challenge of growing food than that they are due purely to chance. This volume seeks to identify common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture that are the results of convergent evolution. The goal is to create a new, synthetic field that characterizes, quantifies, and empirically documents the evolutionary and ecological mechanisms that drive both human and nonhuman agriculture. The contributors report on the results of quantitative analyses comparing human and nonhuman agriculture; discuss evolutionary conflicts of interest between and among farmers and cultivars and how they interfere with efficiencies of agricultural symbiosis; describe in detail agriculture in termites, ambrosia beetles, and ants; and consider patterns of evolutionary convergence in different aspects of agriculture, comparing fungal parasites of ant agriculture with fungal parasites of human agriculture, analyzing the effects of agriculture on human anatomy, and tracing the similarities and differences between the evolution of agriculture in humans and in a single, relatively well-studied insect group, fungus-farming ants.

Organization of Insect Societies

Organization of Insect Societies PDF Author: Jürgen Gadau
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674031258
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 638

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Book Description
In this landmark volume, an international group of scientists has synthesized their collective expertise and insight into a newly unified vision of insect societies and what they can reveal about how sociality has arisen as an evolutionary strategy. Jürgen Gadau and Jennifer Fewell have assembled leading researchers from the fields of molecular biology, evolutionary genetics, neurophysiology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary theory to reexamine the question of sociality in insects. Recent advances in social complexity theory and the sequencing of the honeybee genome ensure that this book will be valued by anyone working on sociality in insects. At the same time, the theoretical ideas presented will be of broad-ranging significance to those interested in social evolution and complex systems.

The Evolution of Social Wasps

The Evolution of Social Wasps PDF Author: James H. Hunt
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198042078
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Social behavior occurs in some of the smallest animals as well as some the largest, and the transition from solitary life to sociality is an unsolved evolutionary mystery. In The Evolution of Social Wasps, James H. Hunt examines social behavior in a single lineage of insects, wasps of the family Vespidae. He presents empirical knowledge of social wasps from two approaches, one that focuses on phylogeny and life history and one that focuses on individual ontogeny, colony development, and population dynamics. He also provides an extensive summary of the existing literature while demonstrating how it can be clouded by theory. Hunt's fresh approach to the conflicting literature on sociality highlights how oft repeated models can become fixed in the thinking of the scientific community. Instead, Hunt presents a mechanistic scenario for the evolution of sociality in wasps that changes our perspective on kin selection, the paradigm that has dominated thinking about social evolution since the 1970s. This innovative new model integrates life history, nutrition, fitness and ecology in which social insect biologists will find a rich storehouse of ideas and information, and behavioral ecologists will find a bracing challenge to long accepted models. Engagingly written, bold, and provocative, The Evolution of Social Wasps marks a milestone in our understanding of one of lifes major evolutionary transitions - the origin of social behavior.

Social Insects

Social Insects PDF Author: Wolf Engels
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642744907
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Evolution of Castes in Insects l BERNHARD RENSCH The evolution of organisms in the succession of generations has been primarilly achieved through the appearance of new hereditary variants with minor deviations along with the development of stable structures and functions. Harmful mutants were eradicated either immediately or in the subsequent generations through the process of natural selection while unharmful or advantageous ones usually survived. As this process continued, many new races and species developed which possessed structures and functions of a rational nature and which became increasingly independent from their environment. These evolutionary tendencies were also promoted through either geographical, ecological, physiological or genetical isolation of populations. In some phylogenetic lines, there occurred an increase in the number of cells due to additional cellular divisions in the morphogenesis of structures. This opened up the possibility for the development of the division of labour within cellular groups leading to more complicated and consequently more successful functions of tissues and organs. A further advancement in the adaptation of a species to its environment was made possible through specialization for certain functions of whole individuals or groups of individuals.

The Insect Societies

The Insect Societies PDF Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 570

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Book Description
A study of insect sociology, presenting individual investigations of wasps, ants, bees, and termites, and discussing caste, behavior, communication, symbioses, and other topics.

The Evolution of Social Behavior in Insects and Arachnids

The Evolution of Social Behavior in Insects and Arachnids PDF Author: Jae C. Choe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521589772
Category : Arachnida
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
'Social' insects and arachnids exhibit complex forms of behavior that involve cooperation in building a nest, defending against attackers or rearing offspring. This book is a comprehensive, up-to-date guide to sociality and its evolution in a wide range of taxa.

The Social Biology of Wasps

The Social Biology of Wasps PDF Author: Kenneth G. Ross
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801499067
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 702

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Book Description
Phylogenetic relationships and the origin of social behavior in the Vespidae. The solitary and presocial Vespidae. The Stenogastrinae. Polistes. Belonogaster, Mischocyttarus, Parapolybia, and independent-founding Ropalidia. The swarm-founding Polistinae. Vespa and Provespa. Dolichovespula and Vespula. Reproductive competition during colony establishment. Evolution of queen number and queen control. Polyethism. Nourishment and the evolution of the social vespidae. Population genetic structure, relatedness, and breeding systems. Evolution of nest architecture. The nest as the locus of social life. The function and evolution of exocrine glands. Evolution of social behavior in sphecid wasps.

Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects

Caste and Ecology in the Social Insects PDF Author: George F. Oster
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691023611
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
In this pathbreaking and far-reaching work George Oster and Edward Wilson provide the first fully developed theory of caste evolution among the social insects. Furthermore, in studying the effects of natural selection in generally increasing the insects' ergonomic efficiency, they go beyond the concentration of previous researchers on the physiological mechanisms of the insects and turn our attention instead to the scale and efficiency of the insects' division of labor. Recognizing that the efficiency of the insect colony is based on a complex fitting of the division of labor to many simultaneous needs, including those imposed by the distribution of resources and enemies around the nest, Professors Oster and Wilson are able to construct a series of mathematical models to characterize the agents of natural selection that promote particular caste systems. The social insects play a key role in the subject of sociobiology because their social organization is so rigid and can be related to genetic evolution. Because of this important consideration, the authors' work has consequences not only for entomology but also for general evolutionary theory.

Insect Bioecology and Nutrition for Integrated Pest Management

Insect Bioecology and Nutrition for Integrated Pest Management PDF Author: Antonio Ricardo Panizzi
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1439837090
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 750

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Book Description
The field of insect nutritional ecology has been defined by how insects deal with nutritional and non-nutritional compounds, and how these compounds influence their biology in evolutionary time. In contrast, Insect Bioecology and Nutrition for Integrated Pest Management presents these entomological concepts within the framework of integrated pest m