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An animal that exhibits a high degree of sociality is called a social animal. The highest degree of sociality recognized by sociobiologists is eusociality. A eusocial taxon is one that exhibits overlapping adult generations, reproductive division of labor, cooperative care of young, and—in the most refined cases—a biological caste system.
The individuals giving up their own reproductive success form a sterile caste of workers within the group. All species that practice reproductive altruism produce one or more queens, the only breeding females, who are larger than the rest. The remainder of the society is composed of a few breeding males, sterile male and female workers, and the ...
Solitary life in animals is considered to be the ancestral state of living; and group living has thus evolved independently in many species of animals. [2] Therefore, species that form groups through social interaction will result in a group of individuals that gain an evolutionary advantage, such as increased protection against predators ...
The similarities between all present day organisms imply a common ancestor from which all known species, living and extinct, have diverged. More than 99 percent of all species that ever lived (over five billion) [1] are estimated to be extinct.
Robert MacArthur (1930–1972) is best known in the field of Evolutionary Ecology for his work The Theory of Island Biogeography, in which he and his co-author propose "that the number of species on any island reflects a balance between the rate at which new species colonize it and the rate at which populations of established species become ...
In 1941, a committee chaired by Horace E. Wood II compiled a list of 19 "provincial ages" for North America, later called North American Land Mammal Ages (NMLAs). An example of an NMLA is the Rancholabrean, named after the Rancho La Brea fossil site. One of its characteristic fossils is the bison, which first appears in the Rancholabrean. [7]
Collective animal behaviour is a form of social behavior involving the coordinated behavior of large groups of similar animals as well as emergent properties of these groups. This can include the costs and benefits of group membership, the transfer of information, decision-making process, locomotion and synchronization of the group.
In the 1980s, members of the history department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock organized a lecture series entitled "Historical Ecology: Essays on Environment and Social Change" [8] The authors noted the public's concerns with pollution and dwindling natural resources, and they began a dialogue between researchers with specialties ...