ABSTRACT
The weaver's shuttle that crafts the fabric of sociality is communication. For most social insects, the primary communication mode is by way of chemical messengers called pheromones. Although visual signals and airborne sound appear to be relatively unimportant in the communication systems of social insects, substrate vibrations may be consequential for certain species. Recordings of the stridulatory sounds have revealed that, in addition to the sound produced when adults are disturbed, there is a distinct sound created by adult aggressors when fighting other adults. Since communication is essential to the cohesive interactions that typify social insects, it is instructive to investigate communication modes and systems in subsocial species, where the adults care for their immature offspring for at least some period of time, and in primitively social species. Bess beetles are communal, and the adults provide, or at least make accessible, food for the larvae.
