A striking feature of hymenopterans societies is the absence of male workers. Foraging, nest building, brood care and all other activities required for the functioning of the colony are carried out by the females. These ...

Tree growth influences forest community dynamics and responses to environmental variations, but currently is not well understood. Tree growth in highly diverse wet tropical forests have been well studied and characterised ...

In this thesis, I characterise five species of the bushcricket genus Mecopoda with respect to their acoustic signals and morphology and investigate the phenomenon of acoustic synchrony in one of these five species: Mecopoda ...

Ropalidia marginata is characterized as a primitively eusocial wasp due to the absence of morphological differentiation between the queen and worker castes. Unlike other primitively eusocial wasps, however, the queen in ...

Over the last two decades, there have been increasing concerns about environmental degradation and its consequences on the long-term sustainability of socio-economic systems around the world. The publication of the report ...

Altruism in its extreme form is seen in social insects where most individuals give up their own reproduction and work to rear the offspring of their queen. The origin and evolution of such sterile worker castes remains a ...

Many animals live in societies of varying degrees of organization. Some individuals in these societies seem to sacrifice their own fitness to increase the fitness of some others. Understanding the forces that mould the ...