Owady społeczne: mity i fakty

Abstrakt

This paper provides a review of experimental data devoted to some aspects of social organization and reproductive biology of social insects, with a particular stress laid on phenomena encountered among social Hymenoptera. The following questions are discussed in detail: queen polyandry and its consequences, polygyny and polydomy, alternative social systems, supercolonies and unicolonialism, modifications of social organization taking place in the course of social insect invasions, worker reproduction (sexual reproduction and two modes of parthenogenetic reproduction: arrhenotoky and thelytoky), clonal reproduction, and replacement of reproductives arising as a result of colony usurpation by alien homo- and allospecific queens and workers.