13
votes
Why are lions the only social cats?
This is not a direct answer to your question, but I want to point out that your basic premise is partially incorrect. Other felines also form social groups. For instance, male cheetahs form coalitions ...
- 16.6k
9
votes
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Start studying mathematical biology from basics
There is one book that will perfectly suits your needs:
A biologist's guide to Mathematical Modeling in Ecology and Evolution, by Sally Otto
It is a very good book that is very easy to understand ...
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9
votes
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How do bumblebees and hornets avoid the negative effects of inbreeding?
Queens do not generally breed with their brothers, but with males from other nests. In the life cycle of bees (and other social Hymenoptera), new queens are born late in the season along with haploid ...
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8
votes
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What do you call clearly different sub-groups within a species?
In eusocial insects, especially ants and bees, these groups are called "castes" (see e.g. Hölldobler & Wilson, 1990. This is the same term that is used for social stratifications in some human ...
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7
votes
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Can brain damage caused by physical injury affect the social behaviour of a person?
Socialization is a cognitive and executive brain based function that requires higher level thinking mechanisms usually dependent on the prefrontal coretex. A lot of social cues we obtain from our ...
- 524
7
votes
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Would it be possible to create logical circuits out of insects?
In short, yes, it appears to be possible, and a number of people have performed investigations in this area. For example, see the "Ant-Based Computing" article suggested by @Roland, whose ...
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6
votes
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Intuitive explanation for Kin- and Group- selection
First of all, there is a very heated debate about this in the field of social evolution at present, and you aren't likely to get a conclusive answer. One theorist may give you one answer, but another ...
5
votes
Why social animals attack odd members of their own group?
Persecution is not a term often used in zoology, compared for example to the notion of social exclusion and hierarchy disputes/social animal hierarchy. That is because humans incarcerate animals which ...
- 8,503
4
votes
Male Parenting from Evolution point
Because mother invest the most material and time into producing the offspring, so there is a stronger pressure on them to not waste it. Males can go impregnate other females so there is a stronger ...
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4
votes
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Do ant colonies prioritize survival of particular members above others?
I couldn't find any information about ants starving in times of plenty, most likely since it's difficult to determine whether an ant colony is "letting" certain members starve or whether the ants have ...
- 3,254
4
votes
How to name such grouping behaviour?
I believe it is a type of fission-fusion society or even some hybrid with agent based modeling.
In ethology, a fission–fusion society is one in which the size and composition of the social group ...
- 2,167
4
votes
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Altruism in viscous (asexual) populations
The $sR$ that your looking at is the average relatedness of the next generation. This assumes that the new immigrants into the the population are completely unrelated. So if the population is ...
- 248
4
votes
The evolutionary advantage of sending the most fearless to the front
Species evolve, but individuals are selected. Simplifying a bit, a species evolves as relative allele frequencies change in the population. When natural selection is at play, these changes in allele ...
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3
votes
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Queller's 1985 version of Hamilton's rule
It is just worded a little wierdly in my opinion. The key line in the paper is: 'Fitness components are also defined for all individuals, for example, $C$ is defined, even for a non-altruist, as the ...
3
votes
Intuitive explanation for Kin- and Group- selection
Are kin selection and group selection the same thing? Yes and no.
Yes: These days people tend to use the "direct fitness approach" (Taylor and Frank JTB 1996). It turns out that this is based on ...
3
votes
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Why do ants dig surface paths?
I don't have it with me, but the book Adventures among Ants by Mark Moffett, which I highly recommend if you're even vaguely interested in ants, describes the creation of paths such as this. Some ants ...
- 3,197
3
votes
Evolution of bee hives
I'm assuming you mean the distinct architecture and regular hexagonal shapes in bee honeycombs?
In fact, Charles Darwin spent a good bit of time with honeycombs.
First of all bees and wasps have a ...
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3
votes
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Frogs stop croaking at same time
Calling is a risky activity because it makes the frog conspicuous to predators. When calling in a group, the risk to any given individual is minimized to the point that the minimal risk is outweighed ...
- 1,194
3
votes
Are there mammalian species in which the male makes no contribution after coitus?
Narrowly speaking, the answer to your question is "yes, most of them". West and Capellini (2016) analyze a data set comprising 529 mammalian species, of which only 65 have any form of male ...
- 4,553
2
votes
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Assumptions of Hamilton's rule
Unfortunately, the answer depends completely on how stringent you are with "Hamilton's rule". If you just mean the equation $r \geq c/b$ then it is important to look at modern usages. In modern usage, ...
- 3,002
2
votes
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Why don't fish groom each other?
All cases of same species grooming I know of involve animals with a certain amount of dexterity. For example (images from wikipedia):
Macaw beaks:
&...
- 12.7k
2
votes
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Which monkey species features two distinct male phenotypes?
Patas monkeys exhibit "sneak mating" where a male other than the resident male sires offspring. Resident males do sire more offspring than sneaker males, but both strategies do co-occur. I'm pretty ...
- 2,373
2
votes
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Can animals like squirrels leave "gifts" or tribute for humans?
I believe a lot of these behaviours can fall under the umbrella term of reciprocity, or reciprocal altruism.
In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an
organism acts ...
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2
votes
Why are lions the only social cats?
I agree with some comments that have been made on the validity of the wording used by OP. However there is a legitimate thrust to the question. What could drive Lion sociality?
Females are the base ...
- 99
2
votes
Factors That Would Promote Eusocial Development In Mammals?
What?
Eusociality in mammals can be defined by the following criteria:
reproductive altruism (which involves reproductive division of labor and cooperative alloparental brood care);
overlap of adult ...
- 51k
2
votes
Can someone explain this phenomena?
Parakeets are social animals that live in large groups (flocks). Under ideal environmental conditions, they can form flocks composed of thousands of birds. http://www.softschools.com/facts/animals/...
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2
votes
Does Japan have an ageing population?
I hate to sound rude, but you could easily answer this yourself with even the most minimal look into well-tabulated demographic information, rather than highly non-representative observations. About ...
2
votes
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Are there any eusocial swarms which act prosocially?
Argentine ants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_ant
Global "mega-colony": The absence of aggression within Argentine ant
colonies was first reported in 1913 by Newell & Barber,...
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2
votes
Do microorganisms have complex social behaviors like dominance hierarchies, just as "higher animals" do?
Short answer
All of these papers describe competition; that's all they share in common. Competition is ubiquitous in nature; it need not even involve organisms that have ever encountered each other: ...
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1
vote
Accepted
When is an ant colony at its loudest?
I believe you speak of some species of Formica spp., such as Formica polyctena (nest example)
You should mind that (i) ants are not particularly noisy insects; (ii) ant nests are 3-dimensional ...
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