Evidence for geographic variation in colony social organization in an obligately social sweat bee, Lasioglossum malachurum Kirby (Hymenoptera; Halictidae)

2000 ◽  
Vol 78 (7) ◽  
pp. 1259-1266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam H Richards
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Late Summer ◽  
Species Variation ◽  
Sweat Bee ◽  
Colony Cycle ◽  
Social Species ◽  
Lasioglossum Malachurum ◽  
Reproductive Brood ◽  
Southern Greece

The expression of altruism and colony eusociality are both a matter of degree in social sweat bees. Even in obligately social species, variation in these traits may be observed across a species' range. Lasioglossum (Evylaeus) malachurum (Kirby) is an obligately eusocial sweat bee found across Europe. In western Europe, L. malachurum exhibits north-south clines of increasing colony size associated with the production of more worker broods, and worker production of males, but societies conform to the model of a classically eusocial hymenopteran insect. A population of L. malachurum studied from 1994 to 1998 at Agios Nikolaos Monemvasias in southern Greece exhibits a startlingly different type of social structure. Dissections of female bees collected while foraging on flowers or from excavations of nests showed that the majority of mid- to late-summer workers are mated and (or) have developing ovaries, indicating that some workers are highly reproductive. Nest excavations indicated that in many or most colonies, the queen has disappeared by midsummer, before ovipositing the final, reproductive brood. In orphan nests, workers become the major reproductives, which suggests that males and gynes in the final brood are the offspring of workers. The very long breeding season in southern Greece may explain why colonies often outlive their queen. The result is the expression of a multivoltine colony cycle and a behavioural switch from eusocial to semisocial colony organization.

Being and Becoming

2021 ◽  
pp. 425-438
Author(s):  
Jan Lorenz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Perceived Threat ◽  
Ethnic Boundaries ◽  
Being And Becoming

This chapter explores conversions to Judaism in pre-modern confessional states that were recognized as central to the experience of European Jews and became common in antiquity in the last two centuries BCE. It talks about the procedure and legal ramifications of conversion to Judaism that first emerged in the reforms that were retroactively attributed to Nehemiah and Ezra. It also explains how conversions to Judaism are considered as a social organization of difference of the situational reorganization of ethnic boundaries, which responds to the perceived threat of Hellenism and assimilation. The chapter looks at accounts of transition to Judaism from early modern western Europe, which were generally kept in secret as they ran the risk of ostracism by the surrounding Christian world. It discusses how individuals who became Jewish at the time were being driven by intellectual and theological reasoning.

scholarly journals Identification of 24 new microsatellite loci in the sweat bee Lasioglossum malachurum (Hymenoptera: Halictidae)

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Parsons ◽  
Christelle Couchoux ◽  
Gavin J. Horsburgh ◽  
Deborah A. Dawson ◽  
Jeremy Field
Keyword(s):  
Microsatellite Loci ◽  
Sweat Bee ◽  
Lasioglossum Malachurum

scholarly journals Emergence of the Clerical Corporation in Western Europe (11–13th Centuries) and in Russia (17–18th Centuries)

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 300-320
Author(s):  
Eugene Lyutko
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Russian Orthodoxy ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
Western European

Traditional Christian confessions — for example, in Catholicism or in Orthodoxy — in scholarly literature, in modern legislation, or at the level of everyday consciousness, are understood primarily as clerical corporations. This corporate reading of modern Christianity also influences the understanding of the phenomenon of religion itself, as it happens, for example, in the famous essay on the “field of religion” by P. Bourdieu. This reading also determines the perception of Christianity as a historical phenomenon as well, which, within the framework of such a representation, appears as a corporation at every moment of its historical existence. This article argues that a “clerical corporation” is not a form of social organization that was originally inherent in Christianity, but a historical phenomenon that embraces various confessional contexts at different times. In particular, the emergence of a clerical corporation is fixed within the framework of an asynchronous comparative perspective relying on the examples of Western European Catholicism of the 11th — 13th centuries, and Russian Orthodoxy of the 17th — 18th centuries.

scholarly journals Where have all the spiders gone? Observations of a dramatic population density decline in the once very abundant garden spider, Araneus diadematus (Araneae: Araneidae), in the Swiss midland

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Nyffeler ◽  
Dries Bonte
Keyword(s):  
Population Density ◽  
Trophic Cascade ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Normal Population ◽  
Late Summer ◽  
Population Fluctuations ◽  
Population Densities ◽  
Flying Insects ◽  
Araneus Diadematus

AbstractAerial web-spinning spiders (including large orb-weavers) depend, as a group of insectivores, completely on flying insects as a food source. The recent widespread loss of flying insects across large parts of western Europe, both in terms of diversity and biomass, can therefore be anticipated to have a drastic negative impact on survival and abundance of this type of spiders. To test the putative importance of such a to date neglected trophic cascade, a survey of population densities of the European garden spider Araneus diadematus – a large orb-weaving spider – was conducted in late summer 2019 on twenty sites of the Swiss midland. The data from this survey were compared with published population densities for this species from the previous century. The study verifies above-mentioned hypothesis that this spider’s present-day overall mean population density has declined alarmly to densities much lower than can be expected from normal population fluctuations (0.7% of the historical densities). Review of other available records suggests this pattern is widespread and not restricted to this region. In conclusion, the here documented abundance decline of this once so abundant spider in the Swiss midland is evidently revealing a bottom-up trophic cascade in response to the widespread loss of flying insect prey in recent decades.

scholarly journals Where Have All the Spiders Gone? Observations of a Dramatic Population Density Decline in the Once Very Abundant Garden Spider, Araneus diadematus (Araneae: Araneidae), in the Swiss Midland

Insects ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 248
Author(s):  
Martin Nyffeler ◽  
Dries Bonte
Keyword(s):  
Population Density ◽  
Trophic Cascade ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Normal Population ◽  
Late Summer ◽  
Population Fluctuations ◽  
Population Densities ◽  
Flying Insects ◽  
Araneus Diadematus

Aerial web-spinning spiders (including large orb-weavers), as a group, depend almost entirely on flying insects as a food source. The recent widespread loss of flying insects across large parts of western Europe, in terms of both diversity and biomass, can therefore be anticipated to have a drastic negative impact on the survival and abundance of this type of spider. To test the putative importance of such a hitherto neglected trophic cascade, a survey of population densities of the European garden spider Araneus diadematus—a large orb-weaving species—was conducted in the late summer of 2019 at twenty sites in the Swiss midland. The data from this survey were compared with published population densities for this species from the previous century. The study verified the above-mentioned hypothesis that this spider’s present-day overall mean population density has declined alarmingly to densities much lower than can be expected from normal population fluctuations (0.7% of the historical values). Review of other available records suggested that this pattern is widespread and not restricted to this region. In conclusion, the decline of this once so abundant spider in the Swiss midland is evidently revealing a bottom-up trophic cascade in response to the widespread loss of flying insect prey in recent decades.

Complex sociogenetic organization and the origin of unrelated workers in a eusocial sweat bee, Lasioglossum malachurum

2008 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Soro ◽  
M. Ayasse ◽  
M. U. Zobel ◽  
R. J. Paxton
Keyword(s):  
Sweat Bee ◽  
Lasioglossum Malachurum
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