Behaviour-mediated group size effect constrains reproductive decisions in a social insect

Behaviour-mediated group size effect constrains reproductive decisions in a social insect

Social Context and Reproductive Potential Affect Worker Reproductive Decisions in a Eusocial Insect

Context-dependent decision-making conditions individual plasticity and is an integrant part of alternative reproductive strategies. In eusocial Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps), the discovery of worker reproductive parasitism recently challenged the view of workers as a homogeneous collective entity and stressed the need to consider them as autonomous units capable of elaborate choices which ...

A model for group-size-dependent behaviour decisions in insects using an oscillator network.

Aggressive behaviour within pairs of male crickets leads to the establishment of a dominance hierarchy. Defeated males avoid their victorious adversaries for several hours before regaining aggressiveness. However, the defeated male does not regain aggressiveness if repeated fighting occurs. Loss of individual aggressiveness is limited by group size, which constrains the number of crickets fight...

Social life, evolution of intelligence, behaviour and human brain size

Social life is one of the most critical factors of the evolution of the behavior of non-human primates and humans. Several factors, such as an increase in brain size, adaptive modules, and grooming, are related to the complexities of social groups. Although some scientists have mentioned foraging as a rival hypothesis for the evolution of behavior, in this research, we tried to investigate the ...

Social and reproductive behaviour in elephants

in A Week with Elephants (eds Daniel, J. C. and Datye, H. S.), Bombay Natural History Society and Oxford University Press, Bombay, 1995, pp. 532. 35. Poole, J. H., Coming of Age with Elephants, Hyperion Press, New York, 1996. 36. Vidya, T. N. C., Fernando, P., Melnick, D. J. and Sukumar, R., Molecular genetic structure and conservation of Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) populations across Indi...