A brood pheromone is a chemical or mixture of chemicals released by immature stages that elicits a behavioral response in conspecific adults. The current literature devoted to brood pheromones in several ant species does not prove the existence of such a pheromone or even of brood-specific chemicals. The possibility of a food response or a nestmate recognition response, two of the most confound...

An 852-base pair region of the cytochrome-b gene was sequenced for the brood parasitic cowbirds and 20 additional taxa of the New World blackbirds (Icterinae). The goal of the study was to determine (i) whether interspecific brood parasitism is multiply derived within the assemblage and (ii) the nature of the evolutionary transformation between various forms of interspecific brood parasitism. C...

The original life-history strategy of brood-parasitic birds has been the focus of a large number of studies in ecology and evolution. Whether species adopting such a strategy differ in their response to global changes remains, however, unknown. Both the absence of investment in parental care and the capacity to spread nesting failure by laying eggs in several nests might help brood parasites in...

Avian brood parasites lay their eggs in the nests of other species (hosts) which incubate and rear the brood-parasite offspring. This reproductive strategy directly reduces the cost of reproduction (e.g. parental care) and, therefore, may be subject to natural selection. I discuss three additional advantages arising from the fact that host and parasite are different species and that, therefore,...

Hygienic behavior, a trait that may confer resistance to brood diseases in the honey bee Apis mellifera, was studied in two species of stingless bees in Mexico. Eight colonies each of Melipona beecheii and Scaptotrigona pectoralis were tested for hygienic behavior, the removal of dead or diseased brood, by freeze killing a comb of sealed cells containing pupae. Both species detected and removed...

We present the first ever large scale analysis of actual strategy video game play. Using a corpus of over 2,000 Starcraft: Brood War games from international tournaments, we analyze every player’s actions to determine which of their capacities lead to success. We also tie these capacities to their likely cognitive underpinnings, showing that the ability to distribute attention is correlated wit...

Recently, increasing incidences of AFB and problems controlling the disease – based on resistance build-up in the bacteria, increased residue problems, and loss of natural resistance in bees have renewed the interest for AFB tolerant honey bee strains world-wide. The honey bee possesses different tolerance mechanisms against AFB – e.g. larval resistance, hygienic behaviour and food inhibition o...

European foulbrood (EFB) is a severe bacterial brood disease caused by the Gram-positive bacterium Melissocccus plutonius. The disease has a worldwide distribution and is an increasing problem in some areas. Although the causative agent of EFB was described almost a century ago, many basic aspects of its pathogenesis are still unknown. This review presents both historical results and recent mol...

A recommendation of: Ugoline Godeau, Maryline Pioz, Olivier Martin, Charlotte Rüger, Didier Crauser, Yves Le Conte, Mickael Henry, Cédric Alaux Brood thermoregulation effectivenessis positively linked to the amount of brood but not number bees in honeybee colonies https://doi.org/10.32942/osf.io/9mwye