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Gynes
The gyne (, from Greek γυνή, "woman") is the primary reproductive female caste of social insects (especially ants, wasps, and bees of order Hymenoptera, as well as termites). Gynes are those destined to become queens, whereas female workers are typically barren and cannot become queens. Having a queen is what makes a "queenright" hive, nest, or colony of eusocial insects. A colony with multiple queens is said to be a polygyne form, whereas one with only one is a monogyne form. The red imported fire ant is known to have colonies in both polygyne and monogyne forms. The small red ant, ''Leptothorax acervorum'', has colonies that switch from monogyny to polygyny as a result of seasonal fluctuations. The little fire ant ''Wasmannia auropunctata'' produces unique kinds of meiotic oocytes with a drastic reduction in recombination. These oocytes may either fuse together for gyne production ( automictic parthenogenesis with central fusion) or be fertilized by male gametes for the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plebeia Remota
''Plebeia remota'' is a species of stingless bee that is in the family Apidae and tribe Meliponini. Bees of the species are normally found in a few states in southern Brazil and their nests can be found in tree cavities. Depending on the region, ''P. remota'' may have a different morphology and exhibit different behaviors. The bee's diet consists of nectar and pollen that are collected intensely from a few sources. Researchers have conducted a multitude of studies analyzing the changes that occur in the colony during reproductive diapause and what happens during the provisioning and oviposition process or POP. Taxonomy and phylogeny ''P. remota'' is a member of the order Hymenoptera, which is the insect order comprising bees, wasps and ants. Within Hymenoptera, it belongs to the family Apidae. This bee belongs in the tribe Meliponini. The greatest number of Meliponini species reside in the Neotropics where there are about 420 species known. Within the genus ''Plebeia'', there are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ropalidia Plebeiana
''Ropalidia plebeiana'' is a eusocial temperate paper wasp. It is unique, as it is the only temperate wasp in the typically tropical Ropalidia genus. ''R. plebeiana'' is widely distributed in eastern Australia, and recently have been found making huge nest aggregations, with thousands of nests on trunks of trees, in south-eastern New South Wales. Taxonomy and phylogeny ''R. plebeiana'' is in the ''Vespidae'' family along with thousands of other wasp species. The genus, '' Ropalidia'', is typically made up of wasps that live in tropical locations, but ''R. plebeiana'' is the exception. The genus, ''Ropalidia'' is classified as brown paper wasps. Although ''R. plebeiana'' does not yet have a place within the taxonomy of the ''Ropalidia'' family, it has been discovered to be closely related to ''R. proletaria''. Description and identification ''R. plebeiana'' is a white-faced, brown paper wasp. It is a medium-size paper wasp, with a reddish-brown-colored body. There are small, thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stingless Bee
Stingless bees, sometimes called stingless honey bees or simply meliponines, are a large group of bees (about 550 described species), comprising the tribe Meliponini (or subtribe Meliponina according to other authors). They belong in the family Apidae, and are closely related to common honey bees, carpenter bees, orchid bees, and bumblebees. Meliponines have stingers, but they are highly reduced and cannot be used for defense, though these bees exhibit other defensive behaviors and mechanisms. Meliponines are not the only type of bee incapable of stinging: all male bees and many female bees of several other families, such as Andrenidae, also cannot sting. Some stingless bees have powerful mandibles and can inflict painful bites. Geographical distribution Stingless bees can be found in most tropical or subtropical regions of the world, such as Australia, Africa, Southeast Asia, and tropical America.Michener, C D. ''The bees of the World''. Johns Hopkins University Press, 972 pp. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insect Ecology
Insect ecology is the scientific study of how insects, individually or as a community, interact with the surrounding environment or ecosystem. Insects play significant roles in the ecology of the world due to their vast diversity of form, function and lifestyle; their considerable biomass; and their interaction with plant life, other organisms and the environment. Since they are the major contributor to biodiversity in the majority of habitats, except in the sea, they accordingly play a variety of extremely important ecological roles in the many functions of an ecosystem. Taking the case of nutrient recycling, insects contribute to this vital function by degrading or consuming leaf litter, wood, carrion and dung and by dispersal of fungi. Insects form an important part of the food chain, especially for entomophagous vertebrates such as many mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles. Insects play an important role in maintaining community structure and composition; in the case of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirement of William P. Sisler in 2017, the university appointed as Director George Andreou. The press maintains offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts near Harvard Square, and in London, England. The press co-founded the distributor TriLiteral LLC with MIT Press and Yale University Press. TriLiteral was sold to LSC Communications in 2018. Notable authors published by HUP include Eudora Welty, Walter Benjamin, E. O. Wilson, John Rawls, Emily Dickinson, Stephen Jay Gould, Helen Vendler, Carol Gilligan, Amartya Sen, David Blight, Martha Nussbaum, and Thomas Piketty. The Display Room in Harvard Square, dedicated to selling HUP publications, closed on June 17, 2009. Related publishers, imprints, and series HUP owns the Belknap Press imprint, whi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elsevier
Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', the '' Current Opinion'' series, the online citation database Scopus, the SciVal tool for measuring research performance, the ClinicalKey search engine for clinicians, and the ClinicalPath evidence-based cancer care service. Elsevier's products and services also include digital tools for data management, instruction, research analytics and assessment. Elsevier is part of the RELX Group (known until 2015 as Reed Elsevier), a publicly traded company. According to RELX reports, in 2021 Elsevier published more than 600,000 articles annually in over 2,700 journals; as of 2018 its archives contained over 17 million documents and 40,000 e-books, with over one billion annual downloads. Researchers have criticized Elsevier for its high profit marg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as G & C Merriam Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1843, after Noah Webster died, the company bought the rights to ''An American Dictionary of the English Language'' from Webster's estate. All Merriam-Webster dictionaries trace their lineage to this source. In 1964, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. acquired Merriam-Webster, Inc. as a subsidiary. The company adopted its current name in 1982. History Noah Webster In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary, ''A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language''. In 1807 Webster started two decades of intensive work to expand his publication into a fully comprehensive dictionary, ''An American Dictionary of the English Language''. To help him trace the etymology of words, Webster learned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Queen Bee
A queen bee is typically an adult, mated female (gyne) that lives in a colony or hive of honey bees. With fully developed reproductive organs, the queen is usually the mother of most, if not all, of the bees in the beehive. Queens are developed from larvae selected by worker bees and specially fed in order to become sexually mature. There is normally only one adult, mated queen in a hive, in which case the bees will usually follow and fiercely protect her. The term "queen bee" can be more generally applied to any dominant reproductive female in a colony of a eusocial bee species other than honey bees. However, as in the Brazilian stingless bee ''Schwarziana quadripunctata'', a single nest may have multiple queens or even dwarf queens, ready to replace a dominant queen in a case of sudden death. Development During the warm parts of the year, female "worker" bees leave the hive every day to collect nectar and pollen. While male bees serve no architectural or pollinating purpo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Queen Ant
A queen ant (formally known as a gyne) is an adult, reproducing female ant in an ant colony; generally she will be the mother of all the other ants in that colony. Some female ants, such as the '' Cataglyphis'', do not need to mate to produce offspring, reproducing through asexual parthenogenesis or cloning, and all of those offspring will be female. Others, like those in the genus ''Crematogaster'', mate in a nuptial flight. Queen offspring ants develop from larvae specially fed in order to become sexually mature among most species. Depending on the species, there can be either a single mother queen, or potentially hundreds of fertile queens in some species. A queen of ''Lasius niger'' was held in captivity by German entomologist Hermann Appel for 28 years; also a ''Pogonomyrmex owyheei'' has a maximum estimated longevity of 30 years in the field. Life cycle Development Ants go through four stages of development: egg, larva, pupa (sometimes cocoon, called metamorphosis depending ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eusociality
Eusociality (from Greek εὖ ''eu'' "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), 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. Eusocial colonies can be viewed as superorganisms. Eusociality exists in certain insects, crustaceans, and mammals. It is mostly observed and studied in the Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps) and in Blattodea (termites). A colony has caste differences: queens and reproductive males take the roles of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polistes
Wasps of the cosmopolitan genus ''Polistes'' (the only genus in the tribe Polistini) are the most familiar of the polistine wasps, and are the most common type of paper wasp in North America. Walter Ebeling coined the vernacular name "umbrella wasps" for this genus in 1975 to distinguish it from other types of paper wasp, in reference to the form of their nests. It is also the single largest genus within the family Vespidae, with over 300 recognized species and subspecies. Their innate preferences for nest-building sites leads them to commonly build nests on human habitation, where they can be very unwelcome; although generally not aggressive, they can be provoked into defending their nests. All species are predatory, and they may consume large numbers of caterpillars, in which respect they are generally considered beneficial. The European paper wasp, ''Polistes dominula'', was introduced into the US about 1981 and has quickly spread throughout most of the country, in most cases ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diapause
In animal dormancy, diapause is the delay in development in response to regular and recurring periods of adverse environmental conditions.Tauber, M.J., Tauber, C.A., Masaki, S. (1986) ''Seasonal Adaptations of Insects''. Oxford University Press It is a physiological state with very specific initiating and inhibiting conditions. The mechanism is a means of surviving predictable, unfavorable environmental conditions, such as temperature extremes, drought, or reduced food availability. Diapause is observed in all the life stages of arthropods, especially insects. Embryonic diapause, a somewhat similar phenomenon, occurs in over 130 species of mammals, possibly even in humans, and in the embryos of many of the oviparous species of fish in the order Cyprinodontiformes. Activity levels of diapausing stages can vary considerably among species. Diapause may occur in a completely immobile stage, such as the pupae and eggs, or it may occur in very active stages that undergo extensive migrat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
