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 …

Bees play a key role in maintaining healthy terrestrial ecosystems by pollinating plants.
Stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) are a diverse clade of social bees (> 500 species) with a …

Division of labor among workers is common in insect societies and is thought to be important
in their ecological success. In most species, division of labor is based on age (temporal …

The differentiation of workers into morphological castes represents an important
evolutionary innovation that is thought to improve division of labor in insect societies. Given …

Pathogenic fungi have been used worldwide to control crop pests and are assumed to pose
negligible threats to the survival of pollinators. Although eusocial stingless bees provide …

Stingless bees are increasingly in demand as pollinators in agricultural crops within the
tropics and subtropics. Hive splitting, where one strong managed hive is “split” into two …

Task allocation is a central challenge of collective behavior in a variety of group-living
species, and this is particularly the case for the allocation of social insect workers for group …

Highlights•Stingless bees are the largest and most diverse group of social bees.•Their
division of labour shows both shared and unique traits compared with other bees.•Age …

Bees are well known for being industrious pollinators. Some species, however, have taken
to invading the nests of other colonies to steal food, nest material or the nest site itself …

A widely held assumption in ecology is that specialists are more efficient than generalists.
However, empirical evidence for this fundamental assumption is surprisingly scarce and …