Individuals often differ in what they do. This has been recognised since antiquity.
Nevertheless, the ecological and evolutionary significance of such variation is attracting …

Individuals within social groups often show consistent differences in behaviour across time
and context. Such interindividual differences and the evolutionary challenge they present …

Social organisation in animals takes many forms. It includes assemblages of territorial
animals, dominance hierarchies and social groups, among other things. The basic tenet that …

The evolution of eusociality has allowed ants to become one of the most conspicuous and
ecologically dominant groups of organisms in the world. A large majority of the current∼ …

The initial fitness benefits of group living are considered to be the greatest hurdle to the
evolution of sociality, and evolutionary theory predicts that these benefits need to arise at …

Communication is a fundamental feature of animal societies and helps their members to
solve the challenges they encounter, from exploiting food sources to fighting enemies or …

All social insects defend their colony from predators, parasites, and pathogens. In Oster and
Wilson's classic work, they posed one of the key paradoxes about defense in social insects …

Collective behaviours, such as flocking in birds or decision making by bee colonies, are
some of the most intriguing behavioural phenomena in the animal kingdom. The study of …

Body size is a key life-history trait influencing all aspects of an organism's biology. Ants
provide an interesting model for examining body-size variation because of the high degree …

In honey bee colonies, workers generally change tasks with age (from brood care, to nest
work, to foraging). While these trends are well established, our understanding of how …