Thema: Social Behavior

Many animals form social groups only during certain times of the year. Many bird species flock together in foraging groups in the winter. However, these same birds that sought one another out in the winter set up breeding territories in the spring and will go to great lengths to keep the same birds out of their territory. Thus, for many species, social behavior is a flexible form of animal behavior, one that can be adopted or abandoned depending on the conditions of the environment and the time of year. Insect Societies

Some of the most well-developed social behavior is exhibited by insects such as ants, termites, bees, and wasps. Many of these species live in colonies with thousands or even millions of individuals. One benefit of social behavior for these insects is that different individuals specialize in certain activities. For example, some are the workers who build the colony and go out looking for food that they bring back. Other individuals are the soldiers of the colony. Their job is to continually patrol the colony perimeter and to protect the colony from possible attacks from other colonies. In many ant and bee colonies, all worker and soldier ants are females. Males are usually present in the colony, but do not contribute much. Finally, there is the queen ant or bee. The queen's only job for her entire life is to lay eggs that the workers will care for.

There are substantial benefits to forming social groups and there are also some definite costs to living closely with others of the same species. First, one competes most with others that are most like oneself, and thus a member of a social group always has to share or compete with others for resources. Second, because of the numbers and close proximity of individuals in many social groups, disease may spread through social groups relatively rapidly.