Many species of social Hymenoptera demonstrate behavioral flexibility, where older workers that typically forage can revert to younger worker tasks, such as nursing, when these are absent. This flexib
Underpinning the formation of a social group is the motivation of individuals to aggregate and interact with conspecifics, termed sociability. Here we developed an assay, inspired by vertebrate approa
Among colonies of social insects, the worker turnover rate (colony ‘pace’) typically shows considerable variation. This has epidemiological consequences for parasites, because in ‘fast-paced’ colonies
The rapid increase in “big data” of the post-genomic era makes it crucial to appropriately measure the level of social complexity in comparative studies. We argue that commonly-used qualitative classi