It is often taken for granted that all animals host and depend upon a microbiome, yet this has
only been shown for a small proportion of species. We propose that animals span a …

Prey seldom rely on a single type of antipredator defence, often using multiple defences to
avoid predation. In many cases, selection in different contexts may favour the evolution of …

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∼ …

Convergence is the phenomenon whereby similar phenotypes evolve independently in
different lineages. One example is resistance to toxins in animals. Toxins have evolved …

Dietary analysis using DNA metabarcoding is a powerful tool that is increasingly being used
to further our knowledge of trophic interactions in highly complex food webs but is not …

Linking interspecific interactions (eg, mutualism, competition, predation, parasitism) to
macroevolution (evolutionary change on deep timescales) is a key goal in biology. The role …

Animals construct and inhabit nests that can exhibit dramatic intra-and interspecific variation
due to differences in behaviour, the biotic and abiotic environment, and evolutionary history …

Understanding the link between ecology and morphology is a fundamental goal in biology.
Ants are diverse terrestrial organisms, known to exhibit ecologically driven morphological …

Ant–plant interactions are diverse and abundant and include classic models in the study of
mutualism and other biotic interactions. By estimating a time-scaled phylogeny of more than …

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 …