Brood sorting, observed in some ant colonies, is a major example of social insects ability to solve problems at the collective level. Two processes characterize this phenomenon : a process of aggregation of all brood items in a single cluster, coupled with a process of segregation of items in concentric annuli, each containing items of different type. The mechanism of brood sorting, though it h...

This research examined the effects of comb age on honey bee colony growth and brood survivorship. Experimental old combs were of an unknown age, but were dark and heavy as typical of combs one or more years old. New combs were produced just prior to the beginning of the experiment and had never had brood previously reared in them. Either old or new combs were installed into each of 21–24 nucleu...

Abstract European foulbrood (EFB), caused by Melissococcus plutonius, is a globally distributed bacterial brood disease affecting Apis mellifera larvae. There some evidence, even if under debate, that spreading of the within colony prevented worker bees performing hygienic behaviour, including detection and removal infected Olfactory cues (brood pheromones, signature mixtures, diagnostic substa...

BACKGROUND Numerous surveys reveal high levels of pesticide residue contamination in honey bee comb. We conducted studies to examine possible direct and indirect effects of pesticide exposure from contaminated brood comb on developing worker bees and adult worker lifespan. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Worker bees were reared in brood comb containing high levels of known pesticide residues (...

In Apis mellifera, hygienic behavior involves recognition and removal of sick, damaged or dead brood from capped cells. We investigated whether bees react in the same way to grouped versus isolated damaged capped brood cells. Three colonies of wild-type Africanized honey bees and three colonies of Carniolan honey bees were used for this investigation. Capped worker brood cells aged 12 to 14 day...

—Rules of food allocation between nestlings of the black-billed magpie Pica pica, a species showing brood reduction. Aims: The existence of a size hierarchy of nestlings in a brood facilitates a secondary readjustment of brood size to resource availability, through the death of the smaller chicks when food is scarce. A mechanism to facilitate brood reduction would be for parents preferentially ...

Cooperative brood care is assumed to be the common driving factor leading to sociality. While this seems to be true for social Hymenoptera and many cooperatively breeding vertebrates, the importance of brood care for the evolution of eusociality in termites is unclear. A first step in elucidating this problem is an assessment of the ancestral condition in termites. We investigated this by deter...

A number of studies have suggested that avian brood size is individually optimized. Yet, optimal reproductive decisions likely vary owing to among-individual differences in environmental sensitivity. Specifically, 'proactive' individuals who do not track environmental changes may be less able to produce optimal brood sizes than 'reactive' individuals who have more precise local environmental kn...

A number of hypothesis have been presented to explain the complex interactions occurring during brood reduction, but few simulation models successfully combines hypothesis together necessary to describe evolutionary stable strategies. In our solution we present a simple experimental simulation for brood reduction for which each sibling act as an autonomous agent that has the ability to initiate...

Partial brood loss in red-cockaded woodpeckers (Picoides borealis) was studied during 2 breeding seasons in eastern Texas. The timing of partial brood loss, group size, number of initial nestlings, number of birds fledged, and habitat characteristics of the group's cavity-tree cluster were examined for 37 woodpecker groups in loblolly(Pinus taeda) shortleaf (I! echinata) pine habitat and 14 gro...