Litinsects

Photo: Todd Ryan Litinsects #26: Eusociality I’m sure everyone has heard of worker bees, queen bees and drones. Bees 🐝 have a complex and interesting social structure and they are not the only ones! There are many different kinds of social systems within the animal kingdom. Even within specific taxonomic groups, individual species can display vastly different social structures and behaviors. Today I’m talking about the highest level of social organization: EUSOCIALITY Eusociality (with the Greek prefix “eu-“ meaning “true”) is defined by 3 GENERAL CHARACTERISTIC: 1) OVERLAPPING GENERATIONS living within the same colony 2) COOPERATIVE BROOD CARE, meaning that individuals collectively care for offspring other than their own 3) REPRODUCTIVE DIVISION OF LABOR into specialized groups Continuing with the bee example, we know these 3 points pertain... different CASTES have specialized jobs pertaining to reproduction (queens produce offspring, drones are there ...