| Title: | Inter-caste communication in social insects |
| Address: | "Department of Ecology and Evolution, Biophore, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Electronic address: cgrueter@uni-mainz.de. Department of Ecology and Evolution, Biophore, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. Electronic address: laurent.keller@unil.ch" |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.conb.2016.01.002 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1873-6882 (Electronic) 0959-4388 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Social insect colonies function as highly integrated units despite consisting of many individuals. This requires the different functional parts of the colony (e.g. different castes) to exchange information that aid in colony functioning and ontogeny. Here we discuss inter-caste communication in three contexts, firstly, the communication between males and females during courtship, secondly, the communication between queens and workers that regulate reproduction and thirdly, the communication between worker castes that allows colonies to balance the number of different worker types. Some signals show surprising complexity in both their chemistry and function, whereas others are simple compounds that were probably already used as pheromones in the solitary ancestors of several social insect lineages" |
| Keywords: | "Animals Insecta/*physiology Pheromones/chemistry/*physiology Reproduction/physiology Sexual Behavior, Animal/*physiology;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineGruter, Christoph Keller, Laurent eng Review England 2016/01/24 Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2016 Jun; 38:6-11. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2016.01.002. Epub 2016 Jan 21" |
