|
Seirian Sumner
Seirian Sumner (born 1974) Royal Entomological Society , FRES is a British entomologist and Behavioral ecology, behavioural ecologist. She is a professor at University College London and is an expert in social wasps. Education and career Sumner was educated at Ysgol Gyfun Aberaeron , Ysgol Gyfun. Aberaeron, Wales and then at University College London where she was awarded a Bachelor of Science in Zoology and in 1999 was awarded a PhD on Conflicts over reproduction in facultatively eusocial hover wasps'. Her postdoctoral work was with Jacobus Boomsma at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark; she then held fellowships at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and at the Institute of Zoology, London. Sumner moved to the University of Bristol as a Senior Lecturer in 2012 and then moved to University College London as a Reader in Behavioural Ecology in 2016 and Professor in 2020. Research Sumner's research looks at the evolution of insect Sociality , social beha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Entomological Society
The Royal Entomological Society is devoted to the study of insects. Its aims are to disseminate information about insects and improving communication between entomology, entomologists. The society was founded in 1833 as the Entomological Society of London. It had many antecedents beginning as the Society of Entomologists of London. History The foundation of the society began with a meeting of "gentlemen and friends of entomological science", held on 3 May 1833 in the British Museum convened by Nicholas Aylward Vigors with the presidency of John George Children. Those present were the Reverend Frederick William Hope, Cardale Babington, William Yarrell, John Edward Gray, James Francis Stephens, Thomas Horsfield, George Thomas Rudd and George Robert Gray. Letters of Adrian Hardy Haworth, George Bennett (naturalist), George Bennett and John Curtis (entomologist), John Curtis were read where they expressed their regrets to be unable to attend the meeting. They decided that a socie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociality
Sociality is the degree to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in social groups (gregariousness) and form cooperative societies. Sociality is a survival response to evolutionary pressures. For example, when a mother wasp stays near her larvae in the nest, parasites are less likely to eat the larvae. Biologists suspect that pressures from parasites and other predators selected this behavior in wasps of the family Vespidae. This wasp behaviour evidences the most fundamental characteristic of animal sociality: parental investment. Parental investment is any expenditure of resources (time, energy, social capital) to benefit one's offspring. Parental investment detracts from a parent's capacity to invest in future reproduction and aid to kin (including other offspring). An animal that cares for its young but shows no other sociality traits is said to be ''subsocial''. An animal that exhibits a high degree of sociality is called a ''social animal''. The highe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Populations
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a census, a process of collecting, analysing, compiling, and publishing data regarding a population. Perspectives of various disciplines Social sciences In sociology and population geography, population refers to a group of human beings with some predefined criterion in common, such as location, Race (human categorization), race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. Demography is a social science which entails the statistical study of populations. Ecology In ecology, a population is a group of organisms of the same species who inhabit the same particular geographical area and are capable of Sexual reproduction, interbreeding. The area of a sexual population is the area where interbreeding, inter-breeding is possible between any pai ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Predators
Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the host) and parasitoidism (which always does, eventually). It is distinct from scavenging on dead prey, though many predators also scavenge; it overlaps with herbivory, as seed predators and destructive frugivores are predators. Predators may actively search for or pursue prey or wait for it, often concealed. When prey is detected, the predator assesses whether to attack it. This may involve ambush or pursuit predation, sometimes after stalking the prey. If the attack is successful, the predator kills the prey, removes any inedible parts like the shell or spines, and eats it. Predators are adapted and often highly specialized for hunting, with acute senses such as vision, hearing, or smell. Many predatory animals, both vertebrate and inve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wasp
A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. The wasps do not constitute a clade, a complete natural group with a single ancestor, as bees and ants are deeply nested within the wasps, having evolved from wasp ancestors. Wasps that are members of the clade Aculeata can Stinger, sting their prey. The most commonly known wasps, such as yellowjackets and hornets, are in the family Vespidae and are Eusociality, eusocial, living together in a nest with an egg-laying queen and non-reproducing workers. Eusociality is favoured by the unusual haplodiploid system of sex-determination system, sex determination in Hymenoptera, as it makes sisters exceptionally closely related to each other. However, the majority of wasp species are solitary, with each adult female living and breeding independently ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ecosystem Services
Ecosystem services are the many and varied benefits to humans provided by the natural environment and healthy ecosystems. Such ecosystems include, for example, agroecosystems, forest ecosystem, grassland ecosystems, and aquatic ecosystems. These ecosystems, functioning in healthy relationships, offer such things as natural pollination of crops, clean air, extreme weather mitigation, and human mental and physical well-being. Collectively, these benefits are becoming known as ecosystem services, and are often integral to the provision of food, the provisioning of clean drinking water, the decomposition of wastes, and the resilience and productivity of food ecosystems. While scientists and environmentalists have discussed ecosystem services implicitly for decades, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) in the early 2000s popularized this concept. There, ecosystem services are grouped into four broad categories: ''provisioning'', such as the production of food and water; ''regul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mating
In biology, mating is the pairing of either opposite-sex or hermaphrodite, hermaphroditic organisms for the purposes of sexual reproduction. ''Fertilization'' is the fusion of two gamete, gametes. ''Copulation (zoology), Copulation'' is the union of the sex organs of two sexually reproducing animals for insemination and subsequent internal fertilization. Mating may also lead to external fertilization, as seen in amphibians, fishes and plants. For most species, mating is between two individuals of opposite sexes. However, for some hermaphroditic species, copulation is not required because the parent organism is capable of self-fertilization (Reproduction#Autogamy, autogamy); for example, banana slugs. The term ''mating'' is also applied to related processes in bacteria, archaea and viruses. Mating in these cases involves the pairing of individuals, accompanied by the pairing of their homologous chromosomes and then exchange of genomic information leading to formation of Genetic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leafcutter Ant
Leafcutter ants, a non-generic name, are any of 47 species of leaf-chewing ants belonging to the two genera ''Atta'' and ''Acromyrmex''. These species of tropical, fungus-growing ants are all endemic to South and Central America, Mexico, and parts of the southern United States.. Leafcutter ants can carry twenty times their body weight and cut and process fresh vegetation (leaves, flowers, and grasses) to serve as the nutritional substrate for their fungal cultivates. ''Acromyrmex'' and ''Atta'' ants have much in common anatomically; however, the two can be identified by their external differences. ''Atta'' ants have three pairs of spines and a smooth exoskeleton on the upper surface of the thorax, while ''Acromyrmex'' ants have four pairs and a rough exoskeleton. The exoskeleton itself is covered in a thin layer of mineral coating, composed of rhombohedral crystals that are generated by the ants. Next to humans, leafcutter ants form some of the largest and most complex animal s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parasitic
Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The entomologist E. O. Wilson has characterised parasites as "predators that eat prey in units of less than one". Parasites include single-celled protozoans such as the agents of malaria, sleeping sickness, and amoebic dysentery; animals such as hookworms, lice, mosquitoes, and vampire bats; fungi such as honey fungus and the agents of ringworm; and plants such as mistletoe, dodder, and the broomrapes. There are six major parasitic strategies of exploitation of animal hosts, namely parasitic castration, directly transmitted parasitism (by contact), trophicallytransmitted parasitism (by being eaten), vector-transmitted parasitism, parasitoidism, and micropredation. One major axis of classification concerns invasiveness: an endoparasite lives inside the host's body; an e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ants
Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified. They are easily identified by their geniculate (elbowed) antennae and the distinctive node-like structure that forms their slender waists. Ants form colonies that range in size from a few dozen predatory individuals living in small natural cavities to highly organised colonies that may occupy large territories and consist of millions of individuals. Larger colonies consist of various castes of sterile, wingless females, most of which are workers (ergates), as well as soldiers (dinergates) and other specialised groups. Nearly all ant colonies also have some fertile males called "drones" and one or more fertile females called "queens" (gynes). The colonies are described as superorganisms because the ants appea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Argentine Ants
The Argentine ant (''Linepithema humile''), formerly ''Iridomyrmex humilis'', is an ant native to northern Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and southern Brazil. It is an invasive species that has been established in many Mediterranean climate areas, inadvertently introduced by humans to many places, including South Africa, New Zealand, Japan, Easter Island, Australia, Europe, Hawaii, and the continental United States. Description The worker ants are long and can easily squeeze through cracks and holes as small as in size. Queens are long, much smaller than other species of ants. These ants will set up quarters in the ground, in cracks in concrete walls, in spaces between boards and timbers, even among belongings in human dwellings. In natural areas, they generally nest shallowly in loose leaf litter or beneath small stones, due to their poor ability to dig deeper nests. However, if a deeper nesting ant species abandons their nest, Argentine ant colonies will readily take ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paper Wasp
Paper wasps are Vespidae, vespid wasps that gather fibers from dead wood and plant stems, which they mix with saliva, and use to construct nests made of gray or brown papery material. Some types of paper wasps are also sometimes called umbrella wasps, due to the distinctive design of their nests."Paper Wasp" Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2006. Species The name "paper wasps" typically refers to members of the Vespidae, vespid subfamily Polistinae, though it often colloquially includes members of the subfamilies Vespinae (hornets and yellowjackets) and Stenogastrinae, which also make nests out of paper. Twenty-two species of ''Polistes'' paper wasps have been identified in North America and approximately 300 species have been identified worldwide. The most common ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_with_its_prey.jpg "Click for more on -> Predators")
_pollinating_Avocado_cv.jpg "Click for more on -> Ecosystem Services")
