The spatial position of young animals within a brood affects their survival, so that marginal individuals are at greater risk of predation. Spatial brood structuring may be caused by differences in offspring size, age, hunger, or active parental manipulation through aggression. Nepotistic manipulation of brood structure would confer fitness benefits for parents accepting nondescendant young. Ho...

Previously published data concerning honey bee metabolism, dealt mainly with adult specimens. In most cases, biochemical changes connected with the polyethism of Apis mellifera worker bees were described (Costa and Cruz-Landim, 2005; Elekonich and Roberts , 2005; Roberts and Elekonich, 2005). Little is known about the changes in the metabolism in successive developmental stages of brood (see Hr...

For animals that reproduce in water, many adaptations in life-history traits such as egg size, parental care, and behaviors that relate to embryo oxygenation are still poorly understood. In pipefishes, seahorses and seadragons, males care for the embryos either in some sort of brood pouch, or attached ventrally to the skin on their belly or tail. Typically, egg size is larger in the brood pouch...

Evolutionary theory of parent-offspring conflict explains begging displays of nestling birds as selfish attempts to influence parental food allocation. Models predict that this conflict may be resolved by honest signaling of offspring need to parents, or by competition among nestmates, leading to escalated begging scrambles. Although the former type of models has been qualitatively supported by...

Acetylcholinesterase 1 (AmAChE1) of the honey bee, Apis mellifera, has been suggested to have non-neuronal functions. A systematic expression profiling of AmAChE1 over a year-long cycle on a monthly basis revealed that AmAChE1 was predominantly expressed in both head and abdomen during the winter months and was moderately expressed during the rainy summer months. Interestingly, AmAChE1 expressi...

Please cite this article in press as: Zöttl, M., et of alloparental care, Animal Behaviour (201 In cooperative breeders, where nonparents participate in brood care, the investment of contributors to offspring care is predicted to be interdependent, reflecting a conflict of fitness interests between care providers. We experimentally manipulated the alloparental care of subordinate helpers in the...

Crossover operator is the predominant operator in most of Genetic Programming (GP) system. The empirical evidence shows that along with building blocks are constructed bigger and bigger as GP evolution proceeds, the crossover operator tends to disrupt those building blocks rather than preserve them. The traditional GP crossover primarily acts as macromutation. Looseness is used for representing...

In the polyembryonic wasp Copidosoma floridanum, females commonly lay one male and one female egg in a lepidopteran host. Both sexes proliferate clonally within the growing host larva. Distinct larval castes develop from each wasp egg, the majority being 'reproductives' plus some 'soldiers' which sacrifice reproduction and attack competitors. Maturing mixed sex broods are usually female biased,...

Division of labor is a striking feature observed in honey bees and many other social insects. Division of labor has been claimed to benefit fitness. In honey bees, the adult work force may be viewed as divided between non-foraging hive bees that rear brood and maintain the nest, and foragers that collect food outside the nest. Honey bee brood pheromone is a larval pheromone that serves as an ex...

Small hive beetles (Aethina tumida Murray) can lay eggs cryptically through the cappings of sealed bee brood cells. However, honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) can detect this activity and respond by removing cell cappings and contents (hygienic behaviour). We were interested in identifying conditions that regulate this syndrome of stimulus and response. Beetle oviposition rate (proportion of cells...