Archaeologists announce discoveries at the ancient Maya site of Waka' in northern Guatemala
...will help shed light on the lives of the kings and queens of Waka'. While the individual in the burial chamber is not named in hieroglyphs, chemical and radiocarbon analysis of remains inside the burial will help place this individual with the site's history. The project's 10 different research operations a...Scientists question reports of massive ant supercolonies in California and Europe
...ui said. "There had to have been at least 10 mated queens in the founding population a century ago, but it could have been much larger. It would be as if all of the people in the United States were descended from the Pilgrims who came here in 1620." Instead of fighting, Tsutsui explained, each new ge...Rare ant may help solve some mysteries of social evolution
...etermined length of time. Numerous L. minutissimus queens move into a new colony and attach themselves to ho...has left researchers wondering how L. minutissimus queens travel from colony to colony. "Perhaps these queens go out and mate and find colonies that way," Her...Army ants have defied evolution for 100 million years
...t. "Biologists have wondered why army ants, whose queens can't fly or get caught up by the wind, are yet so... prey without advance scouting, and their wingless queens can produce up to 4 million eggs in a month. While this syndrome is found in every army ant species...Mole-rat Methuselahs push evolutionary theory of aging
...e, Sherman adds, noting that mole-rat queens, like queens in honeybees and termites, are considerably larger than workers in their colonies. Fecundity is important because if old individuals can make disproportionate reproductive contributions, there will be strong selection to postpone senescence. While n...Fire ant protein may help scientists use fire ants' biology against themselves
...enses of smell and taste to regulate the number of queens in colonies and regulate the social structure. "We...er. "This way we could make the ants see and smell queens that aren't there by sending them false signals. This would disturb the whole social organization." ...Fire ant queens and workers negotiate truce' on colony sex ratio
... to the will of her offspring. Rather, workers and queens have arrived at a kind of negotiated middle ground... people to think a little more about the role that queens have in societies like this, and to focus a little more on the mechanisms the queens use to exert co......ss as heads of the colony, says Evans. Developing queens that emerge first, even if only by a matter of hours, almost always beat rival queens in gaining control of colony reproduction. Such polyphenic studies are useful because they reflect ...Blind, naked mole-rats not the inbreeders biologists once thought
...y, and usually only one breeding male, though some queens will take on a second breeder. Queens are known fo... rodents. Some breeding males last as long as the queens do, but workers generally give out after two or three years. "My results along with those of fellow ...Desert bees hedge their bets, wait for the wet
...h. Unlike their honey-making cousins, there are no queens and no workers. "Everyone is a queen, everyone is a worker. They are the soccer moms of the insect world," he says. His research shows that rain triggers the bees' emergence from the larval state into pupae, and then finally into adult desert bees....... was onlyknown to be expressed by females, both by queens and workers, who usuallyperform most of the risky ...sively to the male dominance. Instead workers and queens crouched, becameimmobile or fled the nest. Males also did not forage for food nor perform muchlabor ...Paper Wasp Queens Wait To Hijack Or Adopt
...eens came from destroyed nests or were subordinate queens who had left theirprevious nests. The fact is, in the field we didn't know where they all camefrom. Obviously, adopting is not the only reproductive strategy that waspsengage in, but it is a strategy that can have a high pay off," says Starks. Thes...Russian Queens Bee-Little Mites' Impact
...'s team plans to begin distributing mated Russian queens to beekeepers for experiments to evaluate how well...oduce honey under field conditions. The Russian queens are fueling considerable excitement among apiarists, says Troy Fore of the American Beekeeping Fede...'Mean Gene' Found In Africanized Honey Bees
...etic markers that could predict the probability of queens having the African version of stinging genes so it will be easier for breeders to avoid using these queen bees," he says. "Ultimately it might be possible to clone the gene through map-based cloning so that we can better understand how this gene affe...Careful Honeybee Breeding Combats Tracheal Mite Pests
...gh artificialinsemination, they have been breeding queens and drones that appear to showmite resistance and ...the farm industry does. She said thatsuppliers of queens and drones don’t control breeding enough to assurethe quality of their bees. “You c...Study Examines How Mechanisms Evolve To Regulate Bee Development
...one level was elevated, dronesbegan to seek virgin queens earlier than same-aged drones whose levels werenot altered. The higher hormone levels, in effect, caused the drones togrow up faster. This is similar to what happens in workers; hormone treatmentcauses them to start foraging at a younger age. To tes...