I remember hearing that of hive building insects, only termites have a more even sex distribution. Like wasps, ants, bees etc are almost all female, but termites for some reason skipped on that.
Termites aren't related to other social insects, they belong to different orders. They're an example of convergent evolution. Some of the nearest relatives of termites are... cockroaches. Termites are on the more disgusting side of insects - smellier and pestier than ants/bees/wasps.
You sent me down a rabbit hole about Termites and now I'm reading about Autothysis wherein certain species of Termite will rupture glands to produce a sticky substance to block tunnels when the colony is attacked.
Termites are rad. I mean us humans dislike them since they sometimes mistakenly eat our houses, but they have developed a lot of cool and surprisingly intricate survival strategies.
They totally are. I was just reading about how certain species have soldier termites that don't have mandibles they just spit toxic goo at enemies and rely on worker termites to feed them. Fascinating!
It’s both bees and ants. The reproductive strategy is called haplodiploidy. Males are born from unfertilized eggs (haploid) and females from fertilized eggs (diploid).
This means that all the female ‘sisters’ in a colony are 75% related to each other, and more related to their siblings than they would be to their own offspring (only 50%). The social organization is (ostensibly) predicated on maintaining highest possible genetic fitness by caring for siblings instead of passing genes on to offspring.
All worker ants are female.
I remember hearing that of hive building insects, only termites have a more even sex distribution. Like wasps, ants, bees etc are almost all female, but termites for some reason skipped on that.
Termites aren't related to other social insects, they belong to different orders. They're an example of convergent evolution. Some of the nearest relatives of termites are... cockroaches. Termites are on the more disgusting side of insects - smellier and pestier than ants/bees/wasps.
Termites are not that gross, compared to cockroaches.
You sent me down a rabbit hole about Termites and now I'm reading about Autothysis wherein certain species of Termite will rupture glands to produce a sticky substance to block tunnels when the colony is attacked.
Termites are rad. I mean us humans dislike them since they sometimes mistakenly eat our houses, but they have developed a lot of cool and surprisingly intricate survival strategies.
They totally are. I was just reading about how certain species have soldier termites that don't have mandibles they just spit toxic goo at enemies and rely on worker termites to feed them. Fascinating!
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don’t they cross over 1 extra time making their genes like 75% similar instead of 50? could be bees
It’s both bees and ants. The reproductive strategy is called haplodiploidy. Males are born from unfertilized eggs (haploid) and females from fertilized eggs (diploid).
This means that all the female ‘sisters’ in a colony are 75% related to each other, and more related to their siblings than they would be to their own offspring (only 50%). The social organization is (ostensibly) predicated on maintaining highest possible genetic fitness by caring for siblings instead of passing genes on to offspring.
god i love science