When its nest is damaged, a colony of the ant Leptothorax albipennis skillfully emigrates to
the best available new site. We investigated how this ability emerges from the behaviors used …

Background The shift from solitary to social behavior is one of the major evolutionary
transitions. Primitively eusocial bumblebees are uniquely placed to illuminate the evolution of …

… Examination of the role of direct comparisons began when Mallon et al. (2001) gave colonies
a binary choice between a good and a mediocre new nest-site. A mediocre nestsite is one …

We tested the decision-making abilities of emigrating ant colonies. The colonies had to choose
a new nest site when presented with two or more potential nest sites, each with different …

Colonies of the ant Temnothorax (formerly Leptothorax) albipennis can collectively choose
the best of several nest sites, even when many of the active ants who organize the move visit …

In vertebrates, it is well established that there are many intricate interactions between the
immune system and the nervous system, and vice versa. Regarding insects, until now little has …

… visits to the new one (EB Mallon and NR Franks, unpublished observations). However, the
Bu¡on’s needle algorithm can only work if the ¢rst visit path was marked with an individual…

Insects are at the dawn of an epigenetics era. Numerous social insect species have been
found to possess a functioning methylation system, previously not thought to exist in insects. …

Bumble bees represent a taxon with an intermediate level of eusociality within Hymenoptera.
The clear division of reproduction between a single founding queen and the largely sterile …

Phenotypic plasticity is the production of multiple phenotypes from a single genome and is
notably observed in social insects. Multiple epigenetic mechanisms have been associated …