Andrés E. Quiñones & William Wcislo As a result of different brood cell provisioning strategies, nest-making insects may differ in the extent to which adults regularly provide extended parental care to their brood beyond nest defense. Mass-provisioning species cache the entire food supply needed for larval development prior to the oviposition and typically seal the brood cell. It is usually assumed that there is no regular contact between the adult(s) and brood. Here, we show that the bee, Megalopta genalis, expresses a form of cryptic brood care, which would not be observed during norm...

Andrés E. Quiñones, G. Sander van Doorn, Ido Pen, Franz J. Weissing, Michael Taborsky Cooperation in social groups is easily undermined by selfish behaviour, unless mechanisms are in place to mitigate conflicts of interest between group members. One such mechanism is to preferentially cooperate with relatives, who have aligned fitness interests by virtue of their shared genes. Alternatively, conflicts can be resolved by means of conditional strategies that enforce the reciprocal trading of services or commodities, enabling (unrelated) partners to negotiate a mutually beneficial outcome. How...