Jan 14, 2012 · A Morphologically Specialized Soldier Caste Improves Colony Defense in a Neotropical Eusocial Bee. PNAS. Published online 9 January 2012. 2. BBC. Scientists Discover Soldier Bees. Suggested...

We define the soldier caste as individuals that possess no or reduced reproduction and that are both morphologically and behaviorally specialized for defense. This excludes old workers that may defend the nest (also called temporal soldiers) in bees and wasps 28-30.

Mar 20, 2025 · The main question about soldier bees is: do they constitute a separate pool of bees, or do they derive from bees abandoning other tasks when the need arises? Unlike many other social insects, honeybee soldiers are not morphologically specialized for the task.

Jul 25, 2024 · A human-infecting parasite has developed sterile soldiers, mirroring the behavior of ants and termites, to safeguard its colonies.

Our results show that worker differentiation is indeed common in Neotropical stingless bees and that the evolution of nest-entrance guards of increased body size is linked to the risk of being...

Our results reveal that worker differentiation evolved repeatedly during the last ~ 25 million years and coincided with the emergence of parasitic robber bees, a major threat to many stingless bee species.

In some termites, ants, and stingless bees, morphologi-cally distinct guards called “soldiers”, notably larger than other sterile workers, behaviorally specialize on defense-related tasks (Miller 1969; Gordon 1996; Grüter et al. 2017). In other instances, like in honey bees, behavioral shifts to guarding among workers is an age-

Soldiers occur in many ant and termite species, where they make up a small proportion of the workforce. A common assumption of worker caste evolution is that soldiers are behavioral specialists. Here, we report the first test of the "rare specialist" hypothesis in a eusocial bee.

Nov 16, 2015 · Here, we report the first test of the “rare specialist” hypothesis in a eusocial bee. Colonies of the stingless bee Tetragonisca angustula are defended by a small group of morphologically...

Jan 27, 2022 · “Most bees, at least the kind that live in colonies, have just one kind of worker, but the stingless bees we used in this study have extra-large workers called ‘soldiers’ that guard the nest entrance in addition to doing all of the other jobs that …