Background Parasitoidism, a specialized life strategy in which a parasite eventually kills its host, is frequently found within the insect order Hymenoptera (wasps, ants and bees). A parasitoid lifestyle is one of two ...

The red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren, is one of the most damaging pest species in the world. A native to the floodplains of subtropical South America, it has been spread to North America and more recently ...

Biological invasions are largely thought to be contemporary, having recently increased sharply in the wake of globalization. However, human commerce had already become global by the mid-16th century when the Spanish connected ...

In social insects, natural selection operates at the level of the colony, rather than the individual, but our understanding of how colony-level phenotypes arise and vary between species is lacking. Here, we test how ...