Rnpalidia marginata, a tropical, primitively eusocial, polistine wasp, is unusual in that the queen (the sole egg-layer) is neither the most behaviorally dominant nor the most active individual in the colony. The queen by herself rarely ever initiates interactions toward her nest mates or unloads returning foragers. There are always a few workers in the colony who are more dominant and acth"e t...

Unlike other primitively eusocial wasps, Ropalidia marginata colonies are usually headed by remarkably docile and behaviourally non-dominant queens who are nevertheless completely successful in maintaining reproductive monopoly. As in other species, loss of the queen results in one of the workers taking over as the next queen. But unlike in other species, here, the queen's successor cannot be p...

In most species of social insect the queen signals her presence to her workers via pheromones. Worker responses to queen pheromones include retinue formation around the queen, inhibition of queen cell production and suppression of worker ovary activation. Here we show that the queen signal of the Brazilian stingless bee Friesella schrottkyi is a mixture of cuticular hydrocarbons. Stingless bees...

Honeybees are endowed with pheromones, many of which exhibit caste specific composition, one of which is Dufour’s gland pheromone (QDP). The queen possesses long chain esters that are absent in queenright (QR) workers. However queenless (QL) workers that develop ovaries also express these queen substances. The ability of QL-workers to produce the queen-like compounds suggests that under normal ...

Western honey bees, Apis mellifera, live in highly eusocial colonies that are each typically headed by a single queen. The queen is the sole reproductive female in a healthy colony, and because long-term colony survival depends on her ability to produce a large number of offspring, queen health is essential for colony success. Honey bees have recently been experiencing considerable declines in ...

We investigated how group members achieve collective decision-making, by considering individual intrinsic behavioural rules and behavioural mechanisms for maintaining social integration. Using a simulated burrow environment, we investigated the behavioural rules of coordinated workload for soil distribution in a eusocial mammal, the naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber). We tested two predicti...

Biological assays were used to evaluate the effect of the insect growth regulator fenoxycarb (ethyl (2-p-phenoxyphenoxy) ethyl carbamate) on production of queen-derived dealation inhibitory pheromone and the queen recognition pheromone of Solenopsis invicta Buren. Treated virgin and mated queens weighed less and were less capable of inhibiting dealation by female alates than were nontreated con...

1 Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, University College London Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK 2 Department of Molecular Neuroscience, University College London Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK 3 UCL Genetics Institute, Department of Genetics, Environment and Evolution, UCL, London WC1E 6BT, UK 4 Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience an...

We investigated worker policing by egg eating in the ponerine ant Pachycondyla inversa, a species with morphologically distinct queens and workers. Colonies were split into one half with the queen and one half without. Workers in queenless colony fragments started laying unfertilized male eggs after three weeks. Worker-laid eggs and queen-laid eggs were introduced into five other queenright col...