The other insect societies [electronic resource] / James T. Costa.
Asked to name an insect society, most of us--whether casual or professional students of nature--quickly point to one of the so-called eusocial marvels: the ant colony, the beehive, the termite mound, the wasp nest. Each is awe-inspiring in its division of labor--collective defense, foraging, and nes...
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| Online Access: |
Full Text (via De Gruyter) |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Cambridge, Mass. :
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2006.
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| Summary: | Asked to name an insect society, most of us--whether casual or professional students of nature--quickly point to one of the so-called eusocial marvels: the ant colony, the beehive, the termite mound, the wasp nest. Each is awe-inspiring in its division of labor--collective defense, foraging, and nestbuilding. Yet E.O. Wilson cautioned back in 1971 that sociality should be defined more broadly, "in order to prevent the arbitrary exclusion of many interesting phenomena." Thirty-five years later, James T. Costa gives those interesting phenomena their due. He argues that, in trying to solve the puzzle of how highly eusocial behaviors evolved in a few insect orders, evolutionary biologists have neglected the more diverse social arrangements in the remaining twenty-eight orders--insect societies that don't fit the eusocial schema. Costa synthesizes here for the first time the scattered literature about social phenomena across the arthropod phylum: beetles and bugs, caterpillars and cockroaches, mantids and membracids, sawflies and spiders.--Publisher |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (xiv, 767 pages, 28 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations (some color) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and indexes. |
| ISBN: | 9780674271616 0674271610 0674021630 9780674021631 |
| Language: | In English. |
| Source of Description, Etc. Note: | Print version record. |