Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Are behavioral classifications blinders to studying natural variation?
- 2 Life beneath silk walls: a review of the primitively social Embiidina
- 3 Postovulation parental investment and parental care in cockroaches
- 4 The spectrum of eusociality in termites
- 5 Maternal care in the Hemiptera: ancestry, alternatives, and current adaptive value
- 6 Evolution of paternal care in the giant water bugs (Heteroptera: Belostomatidae)
- 7 The evolution of sociality in aphids: a clone's-eye view
- 8 Ecology and evolution of social behavior among Australian gall thrips and their allies
- 9 Interactions among males, females and offspring in bark and ambrosia beetles: the significance of living in tunnels for the evolution of social behavior
- 10 Biparental care and social evolution in burying beetles: lessons from the larder
- 11 Subsocial behavior in Scarabaeinae beetles
- 12 The evolution of social behavior in Passalidae (Coleoptera)
- 13 The evolution of social behavior in the augochlorine sweat bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) based on a phylogenetic analysis of the genera
- 14 Demography and sociality in halictine bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae)
- 15 Behavioral environments of sweat bees (Halictinae) in relation to variability in social organization
- 16 Intrinsic and extrinsic factors associated with social evolution in allodapine bees
- 17 Cooperative breeding in wasps and vertebrates: the role of ecological constraints
- 18 Morphologically ‘primitive’ ants: comparative review of social characters, and the importance of queen–worker dimorphism
- 19 Social conflict and cooperation among founding queens in ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
- 20 Social evolution in the Lepidoptera: ecological context and communication in larval societies
- 21 Sociality and kin selection in Acari
- 22 Colonial web-building spiders: balancing the costs and benefits of group-living
- 23 Causes and consequences of cooperation and permanent-sociality in spiders
- 24 Explanation and evolution of social systems
- Organism index
- Subject index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Are behavioral classifications blinders to studying natural variation?
- 2 Life beneath silk walls: a review of the primitively social Embiidina
- 3 Postovulation parental investment and parental care in cockroaches
- 4 The spectrum of eusociality in termites
- 5 Maternal care in the Hemiptera: ancestry, alternatives, and current adaptive value
- 6 Evolution of paternal care in the giant water bugs (Heteroptera: Belostomatidae)
- 7 The evolution of sociality in aphids: a clone's-eye view
- 8 Ecology and evolution of social behavior among Australian gall thrips and their allies
- 9 Interactions among males, females and offspring in bark and ambrosia beetles: the significance of living in tunnels for the evolution of social behavior
- 10 Biparental care and social evolution in burying beetles: lessons from the larder
- 11 Subsocial behavior in Scarabaeinae beetles
- 12 The evolution of social behavior in Passalidae (Coleoptera)
- 13 The evolution of social behavior in the augochlorine sweat bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae) based on a phylogenetic analysis of the genera
- 14 Demography and sociality in halictine bees (Hymenoptera: Halictidae)
- 15 Behavioral environments of sweat bees (Halictinae) in relation to variability in social organization
- 16 Intrinsic and extrinsic factors associated with social evolution in allodapine bees
- 17 Cooperative breeding in wasps and vertebrates: the role of ecological constraints
- 18 Morphologically ‘primitive’ ants: comparative review of social characters, and the importance of queen–worker dimorphism
- 19 Social conflict and cooperation among founding queens in ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
- 20 Social evolution in the Lepidoptera: ecological context and communication in larval societies
- 21 Sociality and kin selection in Acari
- 22 Colonial web-building spiders: balancing the costs and benefits of group-living
- 23 Causes and consequences of cooperation and permanent-sociality in spiders
- 24 Explanation and evolution of social systems
- Organism index
- Subject index
Summary
The purpose of this book is to explore the causes of some of the most spectacular transitions in evolutionary biology, the shifts between cooperation and competition, commensalism, or parasitism. In particular, we seek to explain under what conditions such behavior as parental care, allo – parental care, and other forms of altruism among adults have evolved from the individually selfish life histories so common in animals, and how such behavior, once evolved, can be lost. Insects and arachnids provide the most varied and numerous instances and forms of the evolution of cooperation in animals; hence, they represent the most useful, though often idiosyncratic, database for analyzing social evolution.
We approach our main question, understanding the causes of the diversity of animal social systems, from the viewpoint of behavioral ecology: explaining and predicting behavior from ecology. In the context of studying sociality ‘ecology’ encompasses resource distribution in time and space, interactions with other species, and aspects of demography such as voltinism, survivorship and fecundity. Social ‘behavior’ can be defined broadly as the presence of cooperation and some form of organization, whereby the actions of individuals are coincident and coordinated or communicative in some way (Wilson 1971, p. 469). Our unifying framework for analysis in behavioral ecology is the gene's eye view of inclusive fitness theory, coupled with optimization theory (see, for example, Oster and Wilson 1978).
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997
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