Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences最新文献

{"title":"Nonlinear phenomena in marmot alarm calls: a mechanism encoding fear?","authors":"Daniel T Blumstein","doi":"10.1098/rstb.2024.0008","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rstb.2024.0008","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>I review a case study of marmots that contributed to the empirical basis of the nonlinearity and fear hypothesis, which explains why certain nonlinear acoustic phenomena (NLP) are produced in extremely high-risk situations and communicate high urgency. In response to detecting predatory threats, yellow-bellied marmots (<i>Marmota flaviventer</i>) emit alarm calls and, in some situations, emit fear screams. Prior work on marmots has shown that call production is associated with the degree of risk the caller experiences and that they are individually distinctive. Receivers respond to calls and are sensitive to variation in caller reliability. Calls also contain nonlinear acoustic phenomena. Work has shown that socially isolated animals and those infected with <i>Eimeria</i>, an intestinal parasite, produced 'noisier' calls. However, animals that were likely under greater stress (as measured with faecal glucocorticoid metabolites) produced more structured and less noisy calls. The addition of NLP increases responsiveness in receivers. NLP in alarm calls have modest heritability. Taken together, the study of NLP in marmots has enhanced our understanding of the potential information encoded in alarm calls and is consistent with the hypothesis that variation in NLP production communicates fear, which stimulates work with other species, including humans.This article is part of the theme issue 'Nonlinear phenomena in vertebrate vocalizations: mechanisms and communicative functions'.</p>","PeriodicalId":19872,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"380 1923","pages":"20240008"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11966161/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143773025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vocal registers expand signal diversity in vertebrate vocal communication.","authors":"Christian T Herbst, Coen P H Elemans","doi":"10.1098/rstb.2024.0006","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rstb.2024.0006","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Among air-breathing tetrapods, the most common sound production mechanism is flow-induced self-sustained tissue oscillation, aka voiced sound production, driven by inherently nonlinear physical processes. Some signature features like deterministic chaos have received particular attention in bioacoustics as nonlinear phenomena (NLP). However, one type of NLP that extends frequency ranges and enriches timbres has received much less focus in comparative bioacoustics: vocal registers. Controlled by muscle activity, vocal registers constitute distinct periodic vibratory states of vocal tissues. Transitions between vocal registers often lead to abrupt fundamental frequency jumps, which are, e.g., deliberately used in human alpine yodelling, for example. Theoretical work suggests that register transitions are caused by saddle-node-in-limit-cycle bifurcations. Here, we review the biophysical underpinnings of vocal registers and what signatures they leave in vocal fold kinematics and acoustics in the best studied species: humans. Apart from human speech and song, registers have been described only in a few animal taxa, but the occurrence of signature features suggests that vocal registers could be much more common across vertebrates than currently appreciated. We suggest that registers are a fundamental trait of voice production and that they are favoured in selection because they vastly extend and diversify the acoustic signalling space. This article is part of the theme issue 'Nonlinear phenomena in vertebrate vocalizations: mechanisms and communicative functions.'</p>","PeriodicalId":19872,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"380 1923","pages":"20240006"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11966170/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143773043","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Group size and labour demands determine division of labour as a consequence of demographic stochasticity.","authors":"Christoph Netz, Tim W Fawcett, Andrew D Higginson, Michael Taborsky, Barbara Taborsky","doi":"10.1098/rstb.2024.0206","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rstb.2024.0206","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Division of labour (DoL) is most prominently observed in eusocial insects but also occurs in much smaller cooperative groups where all individuals could potentially perform any task. In such groups, previous experience and learning are the most important mechanisms underlying specialization. Using behavioural simulations, we investigate the dynamics of task specialization in groups of various sizes and with different constraints on the choice of task. We assume that individuals choose tasks by weighing their own competence to perform a task against the group requirement of how much that task needs to be performed. We find that task specialization occurs even if individuals choose tasks based solely on the group's needs rather than their own competence. As large groups are less affected by demographic stochasticity, they can more accurately distribute labour across tasks, and individuals become more effective due to a reduced need to switch between tasks. This effect is enhanced if groups must perform a larger number of tasks. However, from an evolutionary point of view, individuals in larger groups develop a greater responsiveness to group requirements than those in small groups when labour variation carries a fitness penalty and thus will more readily switch between tasks. Small groups thus seem less able to distribute labour optimally over tasks through increased switching, and therefore evolve to ignore task imbalances up to a higher level before the threshold to switch between tasks is crossed. Further, we find that selection on learning ability is stronger in small than in large groups. We conclude that the reason why DoL may emerge more readily in large groups might not be due to a group-size effect on optimal decision-making, but rather because of a lower degree of variation of the labour distribution as a consequence of demographic stochasticity.This article is part of the theme issue 'Division of labour as key driver of social evolution'.</p>","PeriodicalId":19872,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"380 1922","pages":"20240206"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11923606/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143664153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Multi-level societies: different tasks at different social levels.","authors":"Ettore Camerlenghi, Danai Papageorgiou","doi":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0274","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0274","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Multi-level vertebrate societies, characterized by nested social units, allow individuals to perform a wide range of tasks in cooperation with others beyond their core social unit. In these societies, individuals can selectively interact with specific partners from higher social levels to cooperatively perform distinct tasks. Alternatively, social units of the same level can merge to form higher-level associations, enabling individuals to benefit from large social units without always maintaining a large core social unit. The reasons why multi-level sociality evolves in some systems but not in others are not well understood. We propose that this is partly due to a lack of data, especially regarding the fitness consequences of cooperation at different social levels. First, we argue that in multi-level societies individual fitness benefits should increase when performing tasks in cooperation with associates from higher social levels. Second, as more multi-level societies are documented across taxa, we will continue to find similar cooperative tasks performed at each of the different social levels. By providing compelling species examples, from dolphins to fairy-wrens, we underscore that despite the diversity of multi-level social organization, convergence in task performance across social levels will become clearer as more data accumulates. Finally, we highlight the role of multi-level sociality in buffering fluctuating environmental conditions by enabling flexible social associations to emerge according to need.This article is part of the theme issue 'Division of labour as key driver of social evolution'.</p>","PeriodicalId":19872,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"380 1922","pages":"20230274"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11923607/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143664157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The origin and maintenance of division of labour in an Indian paper wasp.","authors":"Anindita Brahma, Raghavendra Gadagkar","doi":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0269","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0269","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Division of labour (DoL) is of prime importance in the success of social insects in various ecosystems and benefits their colonies by increasing efficiency and productivity. This review summarizes more than three decades of experimental evidence collected towards understanding the emergence and maintenance of division of labour in the Indian tropical paper wasp <i>Ropalidia marginata</i>. This primitively eusocial species provides an interesting variation between newly founded colonies and mature colonies in terms of the behavioural mechanisms regulating division of labour. Newly founded colonies rely on physical dominance behaviour for establishing division of labour. Workers in mature post-emergence colonies continue to implement physical dominance as a way to regulate non-reproductive division of labour in a decentralized manner, while the queens switch to chemical regulation of worker reproduction. We discuss experiments that build evidence toward establishing <i>R. marginata</i> as an important model for understanding the origin and maintenance of division of labour.This article is part of the theme issue 'Division of labour as key driver of social evolution'.</p>","PeriodicalId":19872,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"380 1922","pages":"20230269"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11923617/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143664165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Division of labour during honeybee colony defence: poetic and scientific views.","authors":"Daniela Ramirez-Moreno, C Giovanni Galizia, Morgane Nouvian","doi":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0272","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0272","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Poets, philosophers and politicians have used bees, and often projected an idealized human society into their view of how beehives are organized, from the ancient Greeks to present times. We first review how division of labour in honeybees was perceived by human observers, before presenting our current understanding. We focus specifically on defensive behaviour and show that this model provides an interesting case study for our conceptual understanding of division of labour as a whole. We distinguish three phases of the defensive response: detection of an intruder, recruitment of individuals into collective defence and attack. Individual bees may selectively contribute to one or more of these steps. Guard bees monitor entering conspecifics or attacking mammals, and release an alarm pheromone to recruit stinging soldiers. However, we are still far from understanding why only subsets of bees become guards or soldiers (or even if soldiering can be considered a task <i>per se</i>). We discuss the stimuli associated with each of these steps, how they define the number of bees needed and how they might combine with individual and developmental characteristics such that individuals take on a particular task. We also highlight pending questions and interesting avenues for future research.This article is part of the theme issue 'Division of labour as key driver of social evolution'.</p>","PeriodicalId":19872,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"380 1922","pages":"20230272"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11923620/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143664145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Factors that influence the caste ratio in a bacterial division of labour.","authors":"Luis Alfredo Avitia Domínguez, Zhengzhou Yu, Varun Chopra, Ruth Viveros, Natalia Tschowri, Roeland Merks, Bram van Dijk, Daniel Rozen","doi":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0267","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0267","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Colonies of the bacterim <i>Streptomyces coelicolor</i> divide labour between cells that specialize in growth and sporulation and cells that specialize in antibiotic production. This division of labour arises owing to costly chromosome deletions in the antibiotic overproducers. However, the spatial distribution and temporal emergence of these mutations in <i>S. coelicolor</i> colonies remain unknown, or whether mutation frequency-which we liken to the caste ratio in social insects-is phenotypically plastic. To elucidate changes in the proportions of specialized cells (measured as the mutation frequency), we sampled <i>S. coelicolor</i> colonies grown under different conditions. Temporally, mutation frequency increased linearly with colony age and size. Spatially, mutations accumulated disproportionately in the colony centre, despite greater growth and sporulation at the periphery. Exposing colonies to sub-inhibitory concentrations of some antibiotics, a competitive cue in <i>Streptomyces</i>, increased mutation frequencies. Finally, direct competition with other <i>Streptomyces</i> that naturally produce antibiotics increased mutation frequencies, while also increasing spore production. Our findings provide insights into the intrinsic and environmental factors driving division of labour in <i>Streptomyces</i> colonies by showing that mutation frequencies are dynamic and responsive to the competitive environment. These results show that chromosome deletions are phenotypically plastic and suggest that <i>Streptomyces</i> can flexibly adjust their caste ratio.This article is part of the theme issue 'Division of labour as key driver of social evolution'.</p>","PeriodicalId":19872,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"380 1922","pages":"20230267"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11923614/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143664151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Helping niches may trigger the development of task specialization and division of labour.","authors":"Barbara Taborsky","doi":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0273","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0273","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Multimember societies often exhibit Division of labour (DoL), where different individuals perform distinct tasks such as brood care, food acquisition and defence. While demand for tasks exists at the group level, assigning them to specific members poses an organizational challenge. I propose the 'Helping Niche Specialization hypothesis' (HeNS hypothesis), which suggests that cues indicating societal demand for tasks along with the current distribution of help, influence individual biases towards specific task preferences. This process may begin during early ontogeny, even before helping behaviours are actively performed. I first introduce the concept of the 'helping niche', a special form of the social niche. Next, I outline procedures central to the HeNS hypothesis, which represent a stepwise process: (i) societal and environmental cues bias individuals towards task preferences, which may arise already during early life, (ii) experience with preferred tasks reinforces these biases, (iii) learning-by-doing enhances task performance, and/or (iv) reduced response thresholds make task execution more likely, leading to (v) differentiation and specialization. Furthermore, I discuss the costs and benefits of specialization, how helping niches may emerge during development, the environmental conditions that favour them, and alternative pathways to DoL.This article is part of the theme issue 'Division of labour as key driver of social evolution'.</p>","PeriodicalId":19872,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"380 1922","pages":"20230273"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11923612/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143664154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The evolution of cooperative breeding in family groups: when should parents tolerate unhelpful helpers?","authors":"António M M Rodrigues, Christina Riehl","doi":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0275","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0275","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cooperatively breeding vertebrates typically live in family groups in which some offspring delay breeding and remain on the natal territory to help rear younger siblings. However, field studies find that helpers can have a neutral or even negative effect on the survival of their relatives. Why, then, do helpers remain, and why do parents tolerate them? Here, we use a kin selection approach to model the conditions under which tolerating helpers is adaptive to parents. Unlike previous models, we consider scenarios in which relatives compete for breeding opportunities in a saturated habitat. We show that kin competition is sufficient to favour tolerance of helpers, even when helpers decrease parental survival or fecundity. Helping is additionally favoured when delaying dispersal benefits the helper (either by decreasing the costs of dispersal or by increasing the chance of territory inheritance). This suggests that the division of reproduction in cooperative family groups can emerge for reasons unrelated to the effects of help itself, but the resulting society sets the stage for more elaborate forms of division of labour. Kin-based helping may therefore be adaptive not only because helpers are related to the brood whom they help, but also because delayed breeding reduces reproductive conflict among siblings.This article is part of the theme issue 'Division of labour as a key driver of social evolution'.</p>","PeriodicalId":19872,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"380 1922","pages":"20230275"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11969389/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143664162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Division of labour in colony defence in a clonal ant.","authors":"Zimai Li, Qi Wang, Daniel Knebel, Daniel Veit, Yuko Ulrich","doi":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0270","DOIUrl":"10.1098/rstb.2023.0270","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Division of labour (DOL) plays a key role across all scales of biological organization, but how its expression varies across contexts is still poorly understood. Here, we measure DOL in a crucial task, colony defence, in a social insect that affords precise experimental control over individual and colony traits, the clonal raider ant (<i>Ooceraea biroi</i>). We find that DOL in defence behaviour emerges within colonies of near-identical workers, likely reflecting variation in individual response thresholds, and that it increases with colony size. Additionally, colonies with pupae show higher defence levels than those without brood. However, we do not find evidence for a behavioural syndrome linking defence with exploration and activity, as previously reported in other systems. By showing how colony composition and size affect group response to potential threats, our findings highlight the role of the social context in shaping DOL.This article is part of the theme issue 'Division of labour as key driver of social evolution'.</p>","PeriodicalId":19872,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","volume":"380 1922","pages":"20230270"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11969388/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143664150","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}