Founding Phase Research Articles

Social regulation of maternal traits in nest-founding bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) queens

During the nest-founding phase of the bumble bee colony cycle, queens undergo striking changes in maternal care behavior. Early in the founding phase, prior to the emergence of workers in the nest, queens are reproductive and also provision and feed their offspring. However, later in the founding phase, queens reduce their feeding of larvae and become specialized on reproduction. This transition is synchronized with the emergence of workers in the colony, who assume the task of feeding their siblings. Using a social manipulation experiment with the bumble bee Bombus terrestris, we tested the hypothesis that workers regulate the transition from feeding brood to specialization on reproduction in nest-founding bumble bee queens. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that early-stage nest-founding queens with workers prematurely added to their nests reduce their brood-feeding behavior and increase egg laying, and likewise, late-stage nest-founding queens increase their brood-feeding behavior and decrease egg-laying when workers are removed from their nests. Further, brood-feeding and egg-laying behaviors were negatively correlated. We used Agilent microarrays designed from B. terrestris brain expressed sequenced tags (ESTs) to explore a second hypothesis, that workers alter brain gene expression in nest-founding queens. We found evidence that brain gene expression in nest-founding queens is altered by the presence of workers, with the effect being much stronger in late-stage founding queens. This study provides new insights into how the transition from feeding brood to specialization on reproduction in queen bumble bees is regulated during the nest initiation phase of the colony cycle.

Cuban Civil Society during and beyond the Special Period

This article analyses the ‘rebirth of civil society’ in Cuba as a consequence of the ‘Special Period’ and the changes that have occurred in the last 25 years. It examines the evolution of civil society and the constitution of the discursive field in which it has been defined, to explain how and to what limit the different discourses legitimise and enable the understanding of the plurality of actors as well as their potential for action and influence in the political processes. The analysis is divided into two stages: the founding phase (the 1990s) that begins with the arrival of the Special Period; and the consolidation stage, which starts with the new century, in particular since 2007 with the ‘updating model’ that has begun to push deeper changes. This periodisation, in stages that are associated with different state strategies, seeks a comparison to assess the impacts of each of the challenges and proposals facing civil society.

Et grundtvigiansk fakultet

The aim of this article is to shed light on the founding phase of the history of The Faculty of Theology in Christiania (Oslo). Together with the University of Oslo the Faculty celebrates its 200 years anniversary in 2011. The University was the first cultural institution in Norway and played a decisive role in the nation building. The history of the Faculty of Theology is tightly interwoven with that of the University. The initial phase of the Faculty’s history may be characterized ‘Grundtvigian’. Despite of the break with Denmark in 1814, the Danish cultural influences were still strong.

Availability and depletion of fat reserves in halictid foundress queens with a focus on solitary nest founding

Foundress queens of social Hymenoptera require considerable amounts of energy for survival, solitary nest founding, provisioning of the first brood, and egg production. Energy reserves in insects mostly consist of fat. We investigated how hibernation and the subsequent flight season, especially the solitary nest founding phase, influenced the abdominal fat content of gynes in the primitively eusocial sweat bee, Lasioglossum malachurum (Hymenoptera, Halictidae). In our study population, sexuals are produced in both the second and the third broods. Emerging gynes of the third brood had significantly more fat than those of the second brood, whereas there was no such difference in males. As expected, fat reserves in samples of female sexuals caught at emergence, after hibernation, during solitary nest founding, and at the end of the social phase of the nest cycle indicate a severe decrease of reserves that was highest during the 7 weeks of the solitary founding phase. Thus, the amount of fat reserves of foundress queens seems to be crucial, particularly for nest founding. However, investment of energy reserves in the solitary nest founding phase has probably to be balanced with the subsequent social phase in a way that maximizes the queen’s fitness. Possible consequences for the complexity and progress of the nest cycle are discussed.

THE GEOGRAPHIC STRUCTURE OF SELECTION ON A COEVOLVING INTERACTION BETWEEN SOCIAL PARASITIC WASPS AND THEIR HOSTS HAMPERS SOCIAL EVOLUTION

Social parasites exploit societies, rather than organisms, and rear their brood in social insect colonies at the expense of their hosts, triggering a coevolutionary process that may affect host social structure. The resulting coevolutionary trajectories may be further altered by selection imposed by predators, which exploit the abundant resources concentrated in these nests. Here, we show that geographic differences in selection imposed by predators affects the structure of selection on coevolving hosts and their social parasites. In a multiyear study, we monitored the fate of the annual breeding attempts of the solitary nesting foundresses of Polistes biglumis wasps in four geographically distinct populations that varied in levels of attack by the congeneric social parasite, P. atrimandibularis. Foundress fitness depended mostly on whether, during the long founding phase, a colony was invaded by social parasites or attacked by predators. Foundresses from each population differed in morphological traits and reproductive tactics that were consistent with selection imposed by their natural enemies and in ways that may affect host sociality. In turn, parasite traits were consistent with selection imposed locally by hosts, implying a geographic mosaic of coevolution in this brood parasitic interaction.

Philosophy of Sport in Germany: An Overview of its History and Academic Research

In Germany, philosophy of sport is still a young discipline which developed in the 20th century as a result of the growing significance of sport in society. Whereas the academic discussion in Germany which took place in the founding phase of the discipline in the early 1970s had much in common with that conducted in the Anglo-American academic community thanks to such integrative figures as Hans Lenk and Gunter Gebauer, who hosted the international conferences held in Germany by the Philosophic Society for the Study of Sport (PSSS)1 in the early 1980s and the 1990s, the transnational dialogue abated almost completely in the following years.2 As a consequence, philosophy of sport in Germany underwent a development of its own and acquired its own profile. The specific characteristics of German philosophy of sport are not rooted so much in any cultural particularities of sport practice, as is the case for bicycling in the Netherlands or hunting and cricket in England, for example, but rather in regional philosophical traditions established by such philosophers as Wittgenstein, Plessner, Nietzsche, Kant and Hegel.3 In order to give the reader an overview of the historical development and current status of research in philosophy of sport in Germany, relevant exemplary publications will be presented in the following and treated firstly in terms of their genesis, secondly in the context of current trends and tendencies, thirdly from the perspective of differences and commonalities between the German and the Anglo-American academic discussion, and fourthly concerning status and degree of institutionalization. Lastly an outlook on future developments will be given.

Scaling of body weight and fat content in fungus-gardening ant queens: does this explain why leaf-cutting ants found claustrally?

Offspring traits are among the most important life history traits, yet we lack an adequate understanding of their role in social insect life history evolution. Colony founding in the fungus-gardening ants (Tribe Attini) is different from most other ant species because the queens forage during the founding phase. Queens of the most derived genus, Atta, are the only attines that exhibit the more typical claustral founding, where the queens seal themselves in a below-ground chamber and produce their first generation of workers with only body fat reserves. Here I report the dry weights, fat content and energetic value of newly mated queens of ten attine species. Published phylogenies were used to make inferences on the evolutionary transitions in this clade. It appears that the evolution of fungus-gardening was associated with the manufacture of smaller, leaner queens as basal taxa are characterized by small bodies that contain relatively less fat than derived taxa. Moreover, there appears to be an allometric function between fat, energetic content and dry weight, which means that for fatter and claustral queens to develop, they also must become larger.

Back to one: consequences of derived monogyny in an ant with polygynous ancestors

The number of queens per colony is of fundamental importance in the life history of social insects. Multiple queening (polygyny), with dependent colony founding by budding, has repeatedly evolved from ancestral single queening (monogyny) and independent founding by solitary queens in waSPS, bees and ants. By contrast, the reversal to monogyny appears to be rare, as polygynous queens often lack morphological adaptations necessary for dispersal and independent colony founding. In the ant genus Cardiocondyla, monogynous species evolved from polygynous ancestors. Here, we show that queens of monogynous species found their colonies independently, albeit in an unusual way: they mate in the maternal nest, disperse on foot and forage during the founding phase. This reversal appears to be associated with the occurrence of a wing polymorphism, which reflects a trade-off between reproduction and dispersal. Moreover, queens of monogynous species live considerably longer than queens in related polygynous taxa, suggesting that queen life span is a plastic trait.

100 Years of School Law

history of Phi Delta Kappa International in its first 100 years reflects changes that were taking place in schools and in society at large during that time. Mr. Zirkel looks at how events of this period shaped evolution of school law. It usually takes 100 years to make a law, and then, after it's done its work, it usually takes 100 years to be rid of it. --Henry Ward Beecher AS PART OF centennial celebration of Phi Delta Kappa International, in January 2006 Kappan, Donovan Walling traced history of organization from its founding as three education societies in 1906-09 to present. Here I delineate parallel developments in school law in United States, divided into three approximate periods as defined by landmark dates from PDK's history. I. FOUNDING PHASE initial phase of PDK's history included founding of three education societies in 1906-09, their amalgamation in 1910, and publication of first issue of Kappan in 1916. This period was also essentially founding phase of school law. first school law texts appeared just before and after turn of century, and they reflected relative recency of compulsory education laws and earlier world of institutionalizing common schools and their legal boundaries. While these texts tend to tout enormous amount of litigation in school matters, (1) content of this case law shows an era very different from today in both quantity and quality of litigation. For example, in 1892 Irwin Taylor's text ended with a synopsis of school statutes in each state, but bulk of book consisted of alphabetical entries describing nearly 5,000 cases in courts--a clearly inflated estimate. Consider this excerpt from entry Women Voters, which synthesizes court decisions in Kansas and Illinois: Art. 2, [sections] 23 of Kas. Constitution, which provides that The legislature in providing for formation and regulation of schools, shall make no distinction between rights of males and females, does not confer upon females right to vote for school officers. Ill. Act 1891, authorizing women to vote for superintendent of schools, is unconstitutional in that regard. (2) Next, C. W. Bardeen's 1897 manual ascribes great importance to a decision of New York Department of Public Instruction that interpreted state's education code as, among other things, reserving exclusive authority to teachers for the method of imparting instruction ..., assign[ing] seats to scholars, [and] regulat[ing] order in which recitations of classes, pursuing different studies taught in school, are to be held. (3) My personal favorite, though, is this excerpt from a 1907 compilation of school laws by Pennsylvania's state superintendent of public instruction, setting forth one of basic duties of school boards: [T]he boards of school directors ... of each school district of this Commonwealth ... are hereby required at least once during each full school term ... to have taken out, removed and hauled away all excrement and waste matter from every out-house or water closet connected with or standing upon premises of every public school-house in Commonwealth. (4) Harvey Vorhees' 1916 text reminds us that application of establishment clause of First Amendment to states, including their public schools, is quite a recent development. More specifically, at time of his text, Vorhees observed that prevailing weight of judicial authority was that reading of Bible, repeating of Lord's Prayer, and singing of religious songs are lawful. (5) Similarly, Harry Trusler's rather scholarly compendium in 1927 observed that separate but equal applies to public schools for colored children and that school boards may refuse to employ a married woman as a teacher. …

Energetics of newly‐mated queens and colony founding in the fungus‐gardening ants Cyphomyrmex rimosus and Trachymyrmex septentrionalis (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)

Abstract The energetics of colony founding is investigated in the fungus gardening ants (Attini) Trachymyrmex septentrionalis and Cyphomyrmex rimosus. Similar to most ants, inseminated queens of these two species found nests independently unaccompanied by workers (haplometrosis). Whereas most ant founding queens seal themselves in a chamber and do not feed when producing a brood entirely from metabolic stores (claustral founding), the majority of fungus gardening ants must forage during the founding phase (semiclaustral founding). Laboratory‐reared T. septentrionalis individuals comprise 84 dealate females collected after mating flights in June 2004. Twenty are immediately killed to obtain values for queen traits and another 20 after worker emergence for queen, fungus garden and worker traits. Cyphomyrmex rimosus comprise 22 dealate females collected in June 2005; ten of which are immediately killed and similarly prepared. Newly‐mated T. septentrionalis queens have 25% of their dry weight as fat; whereas newly‐mated C. rimosus queens contain 11% fat. These amounts are 50–75% less than most independently founding ant species. Trachymyrmex septentrionalis queens lose merely 5% of their energetic content during colony founding, whereas the total energetic content of their brood is more than three‐fold the amount lost by the queen. Incipient T. septentrionalis colonies produce approximately half as much ant biomass per gram of fungus garden as do mature colonies. Similar to most ants, T. septentrionalis produces minim workers that are approximately 40% lighter than workers from mature colonies. Regardless of their size, T. septentrionalis workers contain much lower fat than do workers of claustral species. These data indicate that fungus gardening is adaptive because colonies can produce much cheaper offspring, making colony investment much lower.

Berlin Roots – Zionist Incarnation: The Ethos of Pure Mathematics and the Beginnings of the Einstein Institute of Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Officially inaugurated in 1925, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was designed to serve the academic needs of the Jewish people and the Zionist enterprise in British Mandatory Palestine, as well as to help fulfill the economic and social requirements of the Middle East. It is intriguing that a university with such practical goals should have as one of its central pillars an institute for pure mathematics that purposely dismissed any of the varied fields of applied mathematics. This paper tells of the preparations for the inauguration of the Hebrew University during the years 1920–1925 and analyzes the founding phase of the Einstein Institute of Mathematics that was established there during the years 1924–1928. Special emphasis is given to the first terms in which this Institute operated, starting from the winter of 1927 with the activities of the director and one of the founders, the German mathematician Edmund Landau, and onward from 1928 when his successors, particularly Adolf Abraham Halevi Fraenkel and Mihály-Michael Fekete, continued Landau's heritage of pure mathematics. The paper shows why and how the Institute succeeded in rejecting applied mathematics from its court and also explores the controversial issue of center and periphery in the development of science, a topic that is briefly analyzed in the concluding section.

Advantages and disadvantages of large colony size in a halictid bee: the queen's perspective

The size of the group of social species might influence basic aspects of productivity and social interactions. In many primitively social insects, foundress queens are basically in control of the number of workers in their first brood. We examined factors that might influence the optimal number of workers a queen should produce during the solitary founding phase in Lasioglossum malachurum (Hymenoptera, Halictidae). A priori, it seems plausible that she should produce as many workers as possible (1) to maximize colony productivity and (2) to minimize the impact of brood parasitoids. However, there might also be unfavorable consequences of a large colony size from the queen's perspective. First, the queen might incur disproportionately high costs that decrease her potential for subsequent reproduction. Second, the queen might not be able to suppress the development of ovaries in a large number of workers. As a clear advantage of a large colony size, we found an increased production of sexuals. Contrary to our expectation, in the first worker phase, nests that were parasitized by Sphecodes bees had more workers than did unparasitized nests. We found no evidence that the production of the first worker brood entailed costs to the queen. However, the degree of development of worker ovaries increased with colony size, and some degree of development was detectable with as few as four workers. This study shows that the number of workers a queen produces might depend on the interaction of several factors, some of which have not been considered in detail yet.

ESO and European astronomy: four decades of reciprocity

This paper describes and discusses some key facts in the early history of the European Southern Observatory: the founding phase leading to the establishment of the “nucleus” of telescopes in Chile, the role and impact of the “parallel line” of national telescopes, the mission of ESO and the impact of the organisation as a maecenas to European astronomy. With specific focus on the foundation of A & A as a refereed journal foregoing page charges, the support of national telescopes of all classes, the allotment of telescope time on the sole basis of proposal quality, the free travel and technical support, the free distribution of “The Messenger”, the development and free distribution of MIDAS, and the personal dedication of some early foster persons.

Observations on the winter aggregates of two polistine paper wasps (Hymenoptera Vespidae Polistinae)

Winter aggregates of Polistes versicolor (Olivier 1791) and P. ferreri (de Saussure 1853) were studied to determine the frequency and timing at which exits and returns of wasps occurred. Special emphasis was put on the likely presence of trophallaxis among individuals. The study was conducted in the tropical of altitude climatic zone of Brazil during the cold season. The highest exit-return frequency took place between 13:30 and 16:30 hr. Absence of food distribution among different adult females may be a pre-nourishment condition to reproductive dominance when the founding phase begins. The presence of males in the aggregates was confirmed.

Aggression and resource sharing among foundresses in the social wasp Polistes dominulus : testing transactional theories of conflict

Tug-of-war models of within-group conflict predict that the frequency of conflict will be positively related to the degree of reproductive sharing within the group; in contrast, a negative relationship supports transactional models, in which reproductive payments among group members limit the degree of within-group selfishness. We tested predictions of the tug-of-war and transactional models by examining cofoundress interactions during the founding (preworker) phase of colony development in 30 naturally nesting colonies of the paper wasp Polistes dominulus. We found that the mean rate of foundress aggression and the mean probability of food sharing were significantly negatively associated, which supports the prediction of the transactional, not the tug-of-war model. Further, cofoundress aggression significantly increased over the founding phase (independently of temperature), while the fraction of aggression initiated by the dominant (alpha) foundress significantly decreased over this period. We show that both of these results are predicted by the transactional model of within-group conflict. Interestingly, the alpha’s rate of aggression was significantly positively temperature dependent, while the beta’s was not. This indicates that the alpha’s aggression level may often be near her physiological maximum, while the beta’s aggression is limi- ted by other factors, contradicting the prediction of the tug-of-war model. Moreover, the alpha’s aggression was significantly positively temperature dependent only in the second half of the founding period, as predicted by the transactional model since this is when there is least reproductive sharing. Finally, our results indicate that the alpha’s level of aggression depends on the resources controlled by the beta.

Comparison of investment in nest construction by the foundresses of consubgenericPolistes wasps,P. (polistes) riparius andP. (P.) chinensis (hymenoptera, vespidae)

Some metric characters of nests built during the founding phase by foundresses were compared between two consubgenericPolistes wasps,P. (Polistes) riparius andP. (P.) chinensis, the former of which inhabit higher latitudes. Volumes and dry weights ofP. riparius nests were strikingly larger than those ofP. chinensis, even when standardized by the foundress weight (2.5 times for volume and 2 times for weight), showing that foundresses ofP. riparius invest much more in the nest construction than those ofP. chinensis. However, percent weights of oral secretion used for nests to total nest weights were smaller inP. riparius than inP. chinensis (52.1% vs. 60.4%). The differences in the investment by foundresses of the two species in the construction and maintenance of nests were discussed in relation to climatic and other environmental factors.

Cooperative colony founding and experimental primary polygyny in the ponerine ant Pachycondyla villosa

In the ponerine ant, Pachycondyla villosa, 40% of all collected founding colonies were pleometrotic associations with two (24%) or three (16%) queens. The egg-laying rate of solitary founding queens did not differ from that of queens in the two-queen groups, whereas individual queens in the three-queen groups laid significantly fewer eggs. Twenty-one weeks after collection pleometrotic associations contained significantly more workers than nests founded by haplometrosis. During the founding phase only one queen per founding association left the nest to forage. Within pleometrotic founding groups the number of eggs laid by individual queens did not differ, and no aggressive behavior occurred, even in the presence of workers. P. villosa seems to be one of the rare cases, where pleometrosis can lead to primary polygyny at least in the laboratory, with the queens coexisting in mature colonies without antagonistic behavior.

The Two Steles of Sargon: Iconology and Visual Propaganda at the Beginning of Royal Akkadian Relief

Sargon's accession to the throne and the subsequent submission of Mesopotamia to Akkadian sovereignty were accompanied by a strong propaganda campaign, the first such cultural enterprise to go beyond the limits of a single city-state, the echoes of which are reflected in various sources. Being a usurper, Sargon devoted a large part of his propaganda to legitimizing his authority, on the one hand by stressing the continuity between Early Dynastic and Akkadian sovereignty and, on the other, by celebrating the religious legitimacy of Akkadian kingship (Liverani 1966: 21–4). Due to these political purposes, pictorial art achieved a central role in Sargonic propaganda (Amiet 1972: 97) as it was addressed to distinguished social groups deeply involved in the Akkadian political system (Foster 1993: 26–9; Westenholz 1993: 161). At the level of official art, royal relief became a functional medium for conveying ideological messages, as is attested by the exceptional findings at Susa and by written sources such as the copies of inscriptions on monuments erected in temples. Two steles kept in the Louvre testify to the strict links established between ideological purposes and visual media during the founding phase of the Akkadian empire.