Tournaments and slavery in a desert ant

Many species of ants engage in physical fighting when territorial borders are challenged. In contrast, colonies of the honeypot ant species Myrmecocystus mimicus conduct ritualized tournaments, in which hundreds of ants perform highly stereotyped display fights. Opposing colonies summon their worker forces to the tournament area by means of an alarm-recruitment system. When one colony is considerably stronger than the other, the tournament quickly ends, and the weaker colony is raided and its ants "enslaved." This is the first example of intraspecific slavery recorded in ants.     

Territoriality and the origin of slave raiding in leptothoracine ants

The slave-raiding behavior of Harpagoxenus canadensis closely resembles the territorial behavior of its host species, Leptothorax muscorum. Of primary importance is the discovery that both species of ants recruit nest mates into battle using an alarm-recruitment system which is a probable evolutionary precursor of more specialized forms of slave-raiding recruitment. The behavior of these species supports the hypothesis that slave raiding in leptothoracine ants evolved from territorial behavior.     

Colobus guereza: Territoriality and Group Composition

Troops of the black and white colobus Colobus guereza in the Bueclongio Forest, Uganda, average eight animals with a typical composition of one adult male, four adult females, two subadults, one juvenile, and one infant. Solitary males and small all-male groups also occur. Troops of mixed sexes have well-defined territories which coincide roughly with the home range. Territories of five groups averaged 0.062 square mile (0.137 kmn(2)) in area agreeing closely with territory-sizes of Asian Colobine monkeys. Adult males have a roar that is concerned with maintaining territorial spacing, but not with actual territorial defense. The territories of these arboreal, forest animals are much smaller than the home ranges of more terrestrial and nonterritorial open-country primaes.     

"Wolf-in-Sheep's-Clothing" Strategy of a Predaceous Insect Larva

The larva of the green lacewing Chrysopa slossonae lives in colonies of the wooly alder aphid Prociphilus tesselatus upon which it feeds. It disguises itself as its prey by plucking some of the waxy "wool" from the bodies of the aphids and applying this material to its own back. The investiture protects it from assault by the ants that ordinarily "shepherd" the aphids. Larvae artifically denuded are seized by the ants and removed from the aphid colonies. A larva requires on the average less than 20 minutes to coat itself with wax. A hungry denuded larva gives the coating procedure about the same behavioral priority as feeding.     

Dominance hierarchies in leptothorax ants

The social organization of Leptothorax allardycei is unique among ant species thus far studied. The workers form linear dominance hierarchies characterized by routine displays of dominance, avoidance behavior, and even fighting. The high-ranking ants are favored in liquid food exchange, have greater ovarian development, and produce 20 percent of the eggs.     

Evolution of clutch size in birds: adaptive variation in relation to territory quality

Reproductive output from enlarged or reduced magpie broods showed that each female generally lays a clutch of optimal size. This size varies considerably between females. Approximately 85 percent of the within-years variation in clutch size was associated with differences between territories. Colonial bird species, lacking individual foraging territories, have a smaller clutch size variation than territorial species.     

The sociogenesis of insect colonies

Studies on the social insects (ants, bees, wasps, and termites) have focused increasingly on sociogenesis, the process by which colony members undergo changes in caste, behavior, and physical location incident to colonial development. Caste is determined in individuals largely by environmental cues that trigger a sequence of progressive physiological restrictions. Individual determination, which is socially mediated, yields an age-size frequency distribution of the worker population that enhances survival and reproduction of the colony as a whole, typically at the expense of individuals. This "adaptive demography" varies in a predictable manner according to the species and size of the colony. The demography is richly augmented by behavioral pacemaking on the part of certain castes and programmed changes in the physical position of colony members according to age and size. Much of what has been observed in these three colony-level traits (adaptive demography, pacemaking, and positional effects) can be interpreted as the product of ritualization of dominance and other forms of selfish behavior that is still found in the more primitive insect societies. Some of the processes can also be usefully compared with morphogenesis at the levels of cells and tissues.     

试论我国国土空间生态修复中公众参与问题

国土空间生态修复是新时代国家治理体系和治理能力建设的重要手段。同时,国土空间生态修复需要构建多元主体协同修复体系,公众参与在国土空间生态修复中愈发重要。然而,目前我国公众参与国土空间生态修复还存在缺乏健全的法律法规保障、公众参与的责任意识和深度不够、公众参与的组织与平台缺乏等问题,从而影响了公众参与发挥有效作用。基于此,提出健全公众参与的法律法规、增强公众参与意识、健全公众参与的组织与平台等对策措施。     

Microgeographic prediction of polygyny in the lark bunting

Field experiments on breeding populations of lark buntings (Calamospiza melanocorys) in South Dakota support the hypothesis that polygyny is promoted by a high variance in quality among male territories. Among these birds protection of the nest site from solar radiation is the major indicator of quality: nestling survival was significantly correlated with nest-site cover, and experimental increase of shading resulted in higher reproductive success. Males with superior territories attracted two mates, whereas those with poor territories failed to attract any. Secondary females had fledging success at least equal to that of contemporaneous monogamous pairs. On the sole basis of a shading score for each territory, the mating status of males (polygynous, monogamous, or bachelor) was predicted accurately in new areas of Colorado and North Dakota before females arrived.     

Wolf-pack buffer zones as prey reservoirs

In a declining herd, surviving deer inhabited overlapping edges of wolf-pack territories. There, wolves hunted little until desperate, in order to avoid fatal encounters with neighbors. Such encounters reduce wolf numbers and predation pressure and apparently allow surviving deer along territory edges to repopulate the area through dispersal of their prime, less vulnerable offspring into territory cores.     

Nestmate and kin recognition in interspecific mixed colonies of ants

Recognition of nestmates and discrimination against aliens is the rule in the social insects. The principal mechanism of nestmate recognition in carpenter ants (Camponotus) appears to be odor labels or "discriminators" that originate from the queen and are distributed among, and learned by, all adult colony members. The acquired odor labels are sufficiently powerful to produce indiscriminate acceptance among workers of different species raised together in artificially mixed colonies and rejection of genetic sisters reared by different heterospecific queens.     

Explaining the abundance of ants in lowland tropical rainforest canopies

The extraordinary abundance of ants in tropical rainforest canopies has led to speculation that numerous arboreal ant taxa feed principally as "herbivores" of plant and insect exudates. Based on nitrogen (N) isotope ratios of plants, known herbivores, arthropod predators, and ants from Amazonia and Borneo, we find that many arboreal ant species obtain little N through predation and scavenging. Microsymbionts of ants and their hemipteran trophobionts might play key roles in the nutrition of taxa specializing on N-poor exudates. For plants, the combined costs of biotic defenses and herbivory by ants and tended Hemiptera are substantial, and forest losses to insect herbivores vastly exceed current estimates.     

The evolution of agriculture in ants

Cultivation of fungi for food by fungus-growing ants (Attini: Formicidae) originated about 50 million years ago. The subsequent evolutionary history of this agricultural symbiosis was inferred from phylogenetic and population-genetic patterns of 553 cultivars isolated from gardens of "primitive" fungus-growing ants. These patterns indicate that fungus-growing ants succeeded at domesticating multiple cultivars, that the ants are capable of switching to novel cultivars, that single ant species farm a diversity of cultivars, and that cultivars are shared occasionally between distantly related ant species, probably by lateral transfer between ant colonies.     

老少边山穷地区城镇化与国土空间生态修复耦合协调机制研究

为探讨城镇化与国土空间生态修复之间的耦合情况，以2007—2017年具有“老、少、边、山、穷”特点的广西、云南、贵州三个省份为研究对象，从“人、土、经、社”和“山、水、林、田、环”构建城镇化系统与国土空间生态修复系统评价指标体系，运用耦合协调模型、灰色关联模型探究区域城镇化与国土空间生态修复耦合协调时空分异特征及其驱动因素。结果表明，“老、少、边、山、穷”整体区域的国土空间生态修复水平2007—2015年高于城镇化水平，2015—2017年低于城镇化水平，且二者之间的差距呈扩大趋势。区内城镇化系统与国土空间生态修复系统的整体差异程度趋于扩大，且后者内部差异程度高于前者。城镇化系统与国土空间生态修复系统的耦合协调关系由轻度失调转变为初级耦合协调，区域整体耦合协调水平高于各省份，虽然耦合协调状况有所改善但仍然相对偏低，未形成良性互动机制。两系统各因素之间的关联度较高，且开展国土空间生态修复对促进城镇化发展的驱动力较高。研究表明，“老、少、边、山、穷”区域应统筹规划，基于边际分析理论，可将城镇化提高程度视为边际收益，将国土空间生态修复成本提升程度视为边际成本，以耦合协调度为约束，形成互为驱动的良性机制，实现二者的可持续发展。     

Rural Development Evaluation from Territorial Function Angle:a Case of Shandong Province

Rural territorial function follows the trend to develop from agricultural production space to a complex of cultural heritage,food security,social stability,quality of living,etc.Based on the rural area's territorial function to both urban and rural areas and its evolution law,index system of rural development evaluation,covering rural production function,rural consumption function,regional sustaining function,and individual development function were constructed in this paper.Case study based on Shandong Pro...     

Raptor nest decorations are a reliable threat against conspecifics

Individual quality is often signaled by phenotypic flags, such as bright plumage patches in birds. Extended phenotype signals can similarly show quality, but in these cases the signals are external to the individual, often taking the form of objects scavenged from the environment. Through multiple manipulative experiments, we showed that objects used for nest decoration by a territorial raptor, the black kite (Milvus migrans), act as reliable threats to conspecifics, revealing the viability, territory quality, and conflict dominance of the signaler. Our results suggest that animal-built structures may serve as signaling devices much more frequently than currently recognized.     

On criticism of agricultural land classification

It has been suggested changing the approach to the classification of agricultural lands, stated in the Land Code of the Russian Federation, passing from land categories to zones of intersettlement territories; and establishing a list of types of land allowed for usage in particular plots, in conformity with long-term plans of rural territory development.     

The first mesozoic ants

Two worker ants preserved in amber of Upper Cretaceous age have been found in New Jersey. They are the first undisputed remains of social insects of Mesozoic age, extending the existence of social life in insects back to approximately 100 million years. They are also the earliest known fossils that can be assigned with certainty to aculeate Hymenoptera. The species, Sphecomyrma freyi, is considered to represent a new subfamily (Sphecomyrminae), more primitive than any previously known ant group. It forms a near-perfect link between certain nonsocial tiphiid wasps and the most primitive myrmecioid ants.     

吉林省乡村地域系统脆弱性演变及其成因类型划分研究

当前我国正面临乡村主导产业退化、粮食生产功能弱化等乡村发展问题,而对于乡村地域系统农业结构改善与经济、社会保障、生态等功能提升是保障国家粮食安全和区域可持续发展的根基,是实现乡村振兴战略的重要保障。本文以吉林省为例,选择县域为单元,从暴露度、敏感性和适应能力3个维度构建乡村地域系统脆弱性评价体系,综合运用因子分析法、熵值法和脆弱性综合评价模型,分析2005—2019年吉林省乡村地域系统脆弱性,利用主导因素法分析不同县域乡村脆弱性主导要素。结果表明,吉林省乡村地域敏感性呈波动上升趋势,暴露度和适应能力呈下降趋势,综合作用结果导致吉林省乡村地域系统整体脆弱性呈现波动下降趋势。吉林省乡村地域系统脆弱程度具有明显的空间聚集性,表现为“中西部低,两边高”的空间格局。根据乡村地域系统脆弱程度的主导因素,将研究区划分为7种成因类型,极度和重度脆弱程度的14个县,主要以敏感性—适应能力为主导因素类型;中度脆弱程度的23个县,主要以适应能力为主导因素类型;轻度和轻微脆弱程度的23个县,主要以适应能力和暴露度—敏感性—适应能力为主导因素类型。因此,提出应从强化水土保持、加强地质灾害治理力度、改造中低产田、加强政府支持引导等方面开展差异化调控措施,全面提升吉林省不同县域乡村地域系统抗风险能力。     

Re-localizing ‘legal’ food: a social psychology perspective on community resilience,individual empowerment and citizen adaptations in food consumption in Southern Italy

This paper investigates how Food Security (FS) is enacted in a southern region of Italy, characterized by high rates of mafias-related activity, arguing for the inclusion in the research of socio-cultural features and power relationships to explain how Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) can facilitate individual empowerment and community resilience. In fact, while FS entails legality and social justice, AFNs are intended as ‘instrumental value’ to reach the ‘terminal value’ of FS within an urban community in Sicily, as well as the space where citizens can act their individual and collective political food choices. Building on the social psychology literature and on ecologic-psychopolitical models (Christens and Perkins in J Commun Psychol 36(2):214–231, 2008), we discuss the case of Addiopizzo, a citizen project promoting the legality of their AFNs through the rejection of the payment of the pizzo (the protection money asked by racket) in the local food chain. The aim is to problematize the extent to which FS is able to re-localize ‘legal’ food in the market. This was done by reconnecting citizens to their space and territory in a socio-cultural context at risk where agro-food producers, retailers and consumers are not free to fully enact their citizenship agency because of a widespread illegal structure. The research findings show that Addiopizzo project enables citizens to act their social power: agro-food producers and retailers by subscribing to formal requirements based on values that reject racket; consumers by purchasing Addiopizzo labelled products; individuals and groups by participating further open-to-the-public activities that promote everyday politically oriented behaviour. The citizen empowerment and community resilience can be exerted within AFNs as they are interconnected paths of reflexivity and social learning within social adaptation. The paper concludes by advocating the role of urban communities as a pivotal agent to maintain positive social adaptations, where AFNs work as a socio-cultural synthesis of traditional and alternative producer–consumer ways of interaction, which are embodied in the FS value.