Research Catalog

Title

The other insect societies / James T. Costa.

Author

Costa, James T., 1963-

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 767 p., [28] p. of plates : ill. (some col.); 27 cm.

Summary

Asked to name an insect society, most of us--whether casual or professional students of nature--quickly point to one of the so-called eusocial marvels: the ant colony, the beehive, the termite mound, the wasp nest. Each is awe-inspiring in its division of labor--collective defense, foraging, and nestbuilding. Yet E. O. Wilson cautioned back in 1971 that sociality should be defined more broadly, "in order to prevent the arbitrary exclusion of many interesting phenomena." Thirty-five years later, James T. Costa gives those interesting phenomena their due. He argues that, in trying to solve the puzzle of how highly eusocial behaviors evolved in a few insect orders, evolutionary biologists have neglected the more diverse social arrangements in the remaining twenty-eight orders--insect societies that don't fit the eusocial schema. Costa synthesizes here for the first time the scattered literature about social phenomena across the arthropod phylum: beetles and bugs, caterpillars and cockroaches, mantids and membracids, sawflies and spiders.--Publisher.

Subjects

• Insecta
• Insect societies

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• Foreword / Bert Hölldobler -- Commentary / Edward O. Wilson -- Introduction : What's in a name? -- The ecology of social evolution : lessons from the other insect societies -- Orthopteroidea. Dermaptera : earwig mothers -- Orthoptera : hopper herds and cricket families -- Embiidina : the web spinners -- Mantodea and Phasmatodea : mantids and walkingsticks -- Blattodea : cockroaches that care -- Psocoptera and Zoraptera : barklice and angel insects -- Hemipteroidea. Hemiptera : Sternorrhyncha : Aphidoidea : samurai aphids -- Hemiptera : Auchenorrhyncha : treehopper herds -- Hemiptera : Heteroptera I : Terrestrial bugs -- Hemiptera : Heteroptera II : Aquatic bugs -- Thysanoptera : communes and family fortresses.
• Neuropteroidea. Coleoptera : beetle societies I : Dung, rove, and carrion beetles and their allies -- Coleoptera : beetle societies II : Bark and ambrosia beetles and other weevils -- Coleoptera : beetle societies III : Leaf, fungus, carrion, darkling, and whirligig beetles and their allies -- Panorpoidea. Lepidoptera : social caterpillars I : Moths -- Lepidoptera : social caterpillars II : More moths, and social butterflies -- Hymenopteroidea. Hymenoptera : Symphyta : sawfliy societies -- Noninsect arthropods. Other social arthropods : arachnids, centipedes, millipedes, and crustaceans -- Coda : sociality in an Appalachian spring.

ISBN

• 0674021630 (alk. paper)
• 9780674021631

LCCN

^^2006010795

OCLC

• 67345686
• SCSB-12847281

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library