Ant colonies are commonly thought to have a stable and simple family structure, with one or
a few egg-laying queens and their worker daughters. However, recent genetic studies reveal …

Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of theoretical and empirical studies of sex
allocation, transforming how we understand the allocation of resources to male and female …

How sterile, altruistic worker castes have evolved in social insects and how they are
maintained have long been central topics in evolutionary biology. With the advance of kin …

Social behavior occurs in some of the smallest animals as well as some the largest, and the
transition from solitary life to sociality is an unsolved evolutionary mystery. In The Evolution …

Morphological diversification of workers is predicted to improve the division of labor within
social insect colonies, yet many species have monomorphic workers. Individual-level …

Laboratory experiments have shown that the fitness of microorganisms can depend on
cooperation between cells. Although this insight has revolutionized our understanding of …

Studies of sex allocation offer excellent opportunities for examining the constraints and limits
on adaptation. A major topic of debate within this field concerns the extent to which the …

Sexually reproducing organisms usually invest equally in male and female offspring.
Deviations from this pattern have led researchers to new discoveries in the study of parent …

The study of sex allocation in social Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps) provides an
excellent opportunity for testing kin-selection theory and studying conflict resolution. A …

Ecological constraints on effective dispersal have been suggested to be a key factor
influencing social evolution in animal societies as well as the shift from single queen …