Eusocial insects could have started with monogamous pairs

Darkfrog submitted, created time 5 months 2 weeks (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)

After reading all those depressing articles about how even monogamous species like swans and wolves cheat on their partners, this one was a bit refreshing. The authors posit that monogamy might be the foundation of cooperative species, at least in the beginning. These findings support the idea that cooperative insects group together because of the chance to let a sister pass on her genes and less because of straight survival.

2 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: eusocial insects eusociality insects bees hives monogamy fidelity kinship altruism

Queen Bees Control Sex of Young After All

Social control of brain morphology in a eusocial mammal

collapsar submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.pnas.org)

"Social status impacts reproductive behavior in diverse vertebrate species, but little is known about how it affects brain morphology. We explore this in the naked mole-rat, a species with the most rigidly organized reproductive hierarchy among mammals. Naked mole-rats live in large, subterranean colonies where breeding is restricted to a single female and small number of males. All other members of the colony, known as subordinates, are reproductively suppressed

Submit comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: brain morphology eusocial mammal eusociality neuroplasticity reproductive strategy sex difference social status