▪ Abstract Agriculture has evolved independently in three insect orders: once in ants, once in
termites, and seven times in ambrosia beetles. Although these insect farmers are in some …

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 …

The Hymenoptera are one of the largest orders of insects, comprising almost 160,000
described extant species with a true total of possibly over one million species. Most species …

Ants of the tribe Attini comprise a monophyletic group of approximately 230 described and
many more undescribed species that obligately depend on the cultivation of fungus for food …

Ants are familiar to every naturalist, ecologist, entomologist, and pest control operator. The
identification of the 233 species of Florida ants is technically difficult, and information on …

The controversy concerning the extent to which the organization of division of labor in social
insects is a developmental process or is based on task allocation dynamics that emerge …

Ants are the most widely distributed and most numerically abundant group of social insects.
First, they were ground-or litter-dwelling predators or scavengers, and certain taxa evolved …

Army ants are dominant social hunters of invertebrates and thereby play an integral role in
tropical ecosystems. They are defined by a suite of evolutionarily interrelated physiological …

Mature colonies of Atta leaf-cutting ants are dominant herbivores throughout the Neotropics.
Although young colonies have natural enemies, mature colonies, which live in extensive …

While strict vertical transmission insures the durability of intracellular symbioses,
phylogenetic incongruences between hosts and endosymbionts suggest horizontal …