The "reproductive ground plan" hypothesis (RGPH) proposes that reproductive division of labour in social insects had its antecedents in the ancient gene regulatory networks that evolved to regulate the foraging and reproductive phases of their solitary ancestors. Thus, queens express traits that are characteristic of the reproductive phase of solitary insects, whereas workers express traits cha...

Background. Many aphid species, including the pea aphid Acyrthosiphon pisum, exhibit a behaviour where they drop or fall from their host plant, a commonly used strategy to avoid predation, parasitism or physical disturbance. We hypothesised that there was a physiological non-consumptive cost due to such dropping behaviour because aphids would expend energy re-establishing themselves on a host p...

For 68 months, we observed the reproductive behaviour of 7288 woody plants (172 figs, 1457 climbers and 5659 trees) spanning major soil and elevational gradients. Two 2-3 month community-wide supra-annual fruiting events were synchronized across five forest types, coinciding with ENSO events. At least 27 genera in 24 families restricted their reproduction to these events, which involved a subst...

Fertility decline is still a puzzle. A recent body of work has suggested that changes in kin networks may help explain changing reproductive behaviour. As countries modernise, kin networks break down and association with non-relatives becomes more common. This reduces both the practical support available to mothers in raising children, and affects reproductive norms. This paper presents the res...