Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their role in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea. They are presently considered a clade, called Anthophila. There are over 16,000 known species of bees in seven recognized biological families. Some species – including honey bees, bumblebees, and stingless bees – live socially in colonies while some species – including mason bees, carpenter bees, leafcutter bees, and sweat bees – are solitary.
Hymenoptera is a large order of insects, comprising the sawflies, wasps, bees, and ants. Over 150,000 living species of Hymenoptera have been described, in addition to over 2,000 extinct ones. Many of the species are parasitic.
In evolutionary ecology, a parasitoid is an organism that lives in close association with its host at the host's expense, eventually resulting in the death of the host. Parasitoidism is one of six major evolutionary strategies within parasitism, distinguished by the fatal prognosis for the host, which makes the strategy close to predation.
Sympatric speciation is the evolution of a new species from a surviving ancestral species while both continue to inhabit the same geographic region. In evolutionary biology and biogeography, sympatric and sympatry are terms referring to organisms whose ranges overlap so that they occur together at least in some places. If these organisms are closely related, such a distribution may be the result of sympatric speciation. Etymologically, sympatry is derived from the Greek roots συν ("together") and πατρ
Brood parasites are organisms that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among birds, insects and fish. The brood parasite manipulates a host, either of the same or of another species, to raise its young as if it were its own, using brood mimicry, for example by having eggs that resemble the host's.
The subfamily Xylocopinae occurs worldwide, and includes the large carpenter bees, the small carpenter bees, the allodapine bees, and the relictual genus Manuelia.
Fish reproductive organs include testes and ovaries. In most species, gonads are paired organs of similar size, which can be partially or totally fused. There may also be a range of secondary organs that increase reproductive fitness. The genital papilla is a small, fleshy tube behind the anus in some fishes, from which the sperm or eggs are released; the sex of a fish often can be determined by the shape of its papilla.
With over 850 species, the genus Nomada is one of the largest genera in the family Apidae, and the largest genus of kleptoparasitic "cuckoo bees." Kleptoparasitic bees are so named because they enter the nests of a host and lay eggs there, stealing resources that the host has already collected. The name "Nomada" is derived from the Greek word nomas (νομάς), meaning "roaming" or "wandering."
Reproductive suppression involves the prevention or inhibition of reproduction in otherwise healthy adult individuals. It includes delayed sexual maturation (puberty) or inhibition of sexual receptivity, facultatively increased interbirth interval through delayed or inhibited ovulation or spontaneous or induced abortion, abandonment of immature and dependent offspring, mate guarding, selective destruction and worker policing of eggs in some eusocial insects or cooperatively breeding birds, and infanticide, and infanticide in carnivores) of the offspring of subordinate females either by directly killing by dominant females or males in mammals or indirectly through the withholding of assistance with infant care in marmosets and some carnivores. The Reproductive Suppression Model argues that "females can optimize their lifetime reproductive success by suppressing reproduction when future [physical or social] conditions for the survival of offspring are likely to be greatly improved over present ones". When intragroup competition is high it may be beneficial to suppress the reproduction of others, and for subordinate females to suppress their own reproduction until a later time when social competition is reduced. This leads to reproductive skew within a social group, with some individuals having more offspring than others. The cost of reproductive suppression to the individual is lowest at the earliest stages of a reproductive event and reproductive suppression is often easiest to induce at the pre-ovulatory or earliest stages of pregnancy in mammals, and greatest after a birth. Therefore, neuroendocrine cues for assessing reproductive success should evolve to be reliable at early stages in the ovulatory cycle. Reproductive suppression occurs in its most extreme form in eusocial insects such as termites, hornets and bees and the mammalian naked mole rat which depend on a complex division of labor within the group for survival and in which specific genes, epigenetics and other factors are known to determine whether individuals will permanently be unable to breed or able to reach reproductive maturity under particular social conditions, and cooperatively breeding fish, birds and mammals in which a breeding pair depends on helpers whose reproduction is suppressed for the survival of their own offspring. In eusocial and cooperatively breeding animals most non-reproducing helpers engage in kin selection, enhancing their own inclusive fitness by ensuring the survival of offspring they are closely related to. Wolf packs suppress subordinate breeding.
The Neriidae are a family of true flies (Diptera) closely related to the Micropezidae. Some species are known as cactus flies, while others have been called banana stalk flies and the family was earlier treated as subfamily of the Micropezidae which are often called stilt-legged flies. Neriids differ from micropezids in having no significant reduction of the fore legs. Neriids breed in rotting vegetation, such as decaying tree bark or rotting fruit. About 100 species are placed in 19 genera. Neriidae are found mainly in tropical regions, but two North American genera occur, each with one species, and one species of Telostylinus occurs in temperate regions of eastern Australia.
A social spider is a spider species whose individuals form relatively long-lasting aggregations. Whereas most spiders are solitary and even aggressive toward other members of their own species, some hundreds of species in several families show a tendency to live in groups, often referred to as colonies.
Eusociality, the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care, overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society which are sometimes referred to as 'castes'. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform at least one behavior characteristic of individuals in another caste.
Eusociality evolved repeatedly in different orders of animals, particularly the Hymenoptera. This 'true sociality' in animals, in which sterile individuals work to further the reproductive success of others, is found in termites, ambrosia beetles, gall-dwelling aphids, thrips, marine sponge-dwelling shrimp, naked mole-rats, and the insect order Hymenoptera. The fact that eusociality has evolved so often in the Hymenoptera, but remains rare throughout the rest of the animal kingdom, has made its evolution a topic of debate among evolutionary biologists. Eusocial organisms at first appear to behave in stark contrast with simple interpretations of Darwinian evolution: passing on one's genes to the next generation, or fitness, is a central idea in evolutionary biology.
Within the insect order Hymenoptera, the Halictinae are the largest, most diverse, and most recently diverged of the four halictid subfamilies. They comprise over 2400 bee species belonging to the five taxonomic tribes Augochlorini, Thrinchostomini, Caenohalictini, Sphecodini, and Halictini, which some entomologists alternatively organize into the two tribes Augochlorini and Halictini.
Eucera is a genus of bees in the family Apidae, subfamily Apinae, and tribe Eucerini – the long-horned bees.
Sexual selection in amphibians involves sexual selection processes in amphibians, including frogs, salamanders and newts. Prolonged breeders, the majority of frog species, have breeding seasons at regular intervals where male-male competition occurs with males arriving at the waters edge first in large number and producing a wide range of vocalizations, with variations in depth of calls the speed of calls and other complex behaviours to attract mates. The fittest males will have the deepest croaks and the best territories, with females known to make their mate choices at least partly based on the males depth of croaking. This has led to sexual dimorphism, with females being larger than males in 90% of species, males in 10% and males fighting for groups of females.
Inbreeding avoidance, or the inbreeding avoidance hypothesis, is a concept in evolutionary biology that refers to the prevention of the deleterious effects of inbreeding. The inbreeding avoidance hypothesis posits that certain mechanisms develop within a species, or within a given population of a species, as a result of assortative mating, natural and sexual selection in order to prevent breeding among related individuals in that species or population. Although inbreeding may impose certain evolutionary costs, inbreeding avoidance, which limits the number of potential mates for a given individual, can inflict opportunity costs. Therefore, a balance exists between inbreeding and inbreeding avoidance. This balance determines whether inbreeding mechanisms develop and the specific nature of said mechanisms.
Exoneura robusta is a species of the primitively eusocial allodapine bee, belonging to the genus commonly referred to as "reed bees". Their common name derives from their use of the soft pith of dead fern fronds as a nesting material. They are native to southeastern Australia, living in both montane and heathland habitats. E. robusta do not have a fixed pattern of sociality, but rather they are capable of adapting their social strategy to different environments. While typically univoltine, populations living in warmer habitats are capable of producing two broods per season. This leads to the incidence of sibling rearing and eusocial behavior. E. robusta lack strict morphological castes, thus allowing for their plastic social behavior and dominance hierarchies.
Tetragonula hockingsi is a small stingless bee native to Australia. It is found primarily in the Northern Territory and in northern Queensland. The colonies can get quite large, with up to 10,000 workers and a single queen. Workers of Tetragonula hockingsi have been observed in fatal fights with other Tetragonula species, where the worker bees risk their lives for the potential benefit of scarce resources.
Tetragonula is a genus of stingless bees. In 1961, Brazilian bee expert, Professor J.S. Moure, first proposed the genus name Tetragonula to improve the classification system by dividing the large genus Trigona stingless bees into 9 smaller groups. About 30 stingless bee species formerly placed in the genus Trigona are now placed in the genus Tetragonula. These bees are found in Oceania, in countries such as Australia, Indonesia, New Guinea, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, and The Solomon Islands. The most recent tabulation of species listed 31 species.
