Loss of resilience preceded transformations of pre-Hispanic Pueblo societies.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Scheffer M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8106319 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BACKGROUND:Sexual reproduction is the norm in almost all animal species, and in many advanced animal societies, both males and females participate in social activities. To date, the complete loss of males from advanced social animal lineages has been reported only in ants and honey bees (Hymenoptera), whose workers are always female and whose males display no helping behaviors even in normal sexual species. Asexuality has not previously been observed in colonies of another major group of social insects, the termites, where the ubiquitous presence of both male and female workers and soldiers indicate that males play a critical role beyond that of reproduction. RESULTS:Here, we report asexual societies in a lineage of the termite Glyptotermes nakajimai. We investigated the composition of mature colonies from ten distinct populations in Japan, finding six asexual populations characterized by a lack of any males in the reproductive, soldier, and worker castes of their colonies, an absence of sperm in the spermathecae of their queens, and the development of unfertilized eggs at a level comparable to that for the development of fertilized eggs in sexual populations of this species. Phylogenetic analyses indicated a single evolutionary origin of the asexual populations, with divergence from sampled sexual populations occurring about 14 million years ago. Asexual colonies differ from sexual colonies in having a more uniform head size in their all-female soldier caste, and fewer soldiers in proportion to other individuals, suggesting increased defensive efficiencies arising from uniform soldier morphology. Such efficiencies may have contributed to the persistence and spread of the asexual lineage. Cooperative colony foundation by multiple queens, the single-site nesting life history common to both the asexual and sexual lineages, and the occasional development of eggs without fertilization even in the sexual lineage are traits likely to have been present in the ancestors of the asexual lineage that may have facilitated the transition to asexuality. CONCLUSIONS:Our findings demonstrate that completely asexual social lineages can evolve from mixed-sex termite societies, providing evidence that males are dispensable for the maintenance of advanced animal societies in which they previously played an active social role.
| S-EPMC6154949 | biostudies-literature
Project description:How did humans sleep before the modern era? Because the tools to measure sleep under natural conditions were developed long after the invention of the electric devices suspected of delaying and reducing sleep, we investigated sleep in three preindustrial societies [1-3]. We find that all three show similar sleep organization, suggesting that they express core human sleep patterns, most likely characteristic of pre-modern era Homo sapiens. Sleep periods, the times from onset to offset, averaged 6.9-8.5 hr, with sleep durations of 5.7-7.1 hr, amounts near the low end of those industrial societies [4-7]. There was a difference of nearly 1 hr between summer and winter sleep. Daily variation in sleep duration was strongly linked to time of onset, rather than offset. None of these groups began sleep near sunset, onset occurring, on average, 3.3 hr after sunset. Awakening was usually before sunrise. The sleep period consistently occurred during the nighttime period of falling environmental temperature, was not interrupted by extended periods of waking, and terminated, with vasoconstriction, near the nadir of daily ambient temperature. The daily cycle of temperature change, largely eliminated from modern sleep environments, may be a potent natural regulator of sleep. Light exposure was maximal in the morning and greatly decreased at noon, indicating that all three groups seek shade at midday and that light activation of the suprachiasmatic nucleus is maximal in the morning. Napping occurred on <7% of days in winter and <22% of days in summer. Mimicking aspects of the natural environment might be effective in treating certain modern sleep disorders.
| S-EPMC4720388 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Homeostatic self-regulation is a fundamental aspect of open dissipative systems. Integral feedback has been found to be important for homeostatic control on both the cellular and molecular levels of biological organization and in engineered systems. Analyzing the task allocation mechanisms of three insect societies, we identified a model of integral control residing at colony level. We characterized a general functional core mechanism, called the "common stomach," where a crucial shared substance for colony function self-regulates its own quantity via reallocating the colony's workforce, which collects and uses this substance. The central component in a redundant feedback network is the saturation level of this substance in the colony. An interaction network of positive and negative feedback loops ensures the homeostatic state of this substance and the workforce involved in processing this substance. Extensive sensitivity and stability analyses of the core model revealed that the system is very resilient against perturbations and compensates for specific types of stress that real colonies face in their ecosystems. The core regulation system is highly scalable, and due to its buffer function, it can filter noise and find a new equilibrium quickly after environmental (supply) or colony-state (demand) changes. The common stomach regulation system is an example of convergent evolution among the three different societies, and we predict that similar integral control regulation mechanisms have evolved frequently within natural complex systems.
| S-EPMC6310805 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Artificial light has reshaped human sleep/wake cycle in industrial societies and raised concern on the misalignment of this cycle relative to the light and dark cycle. This manuscript contrasts sleep timing in extratropical, industrial societies (data from eight national time use surveys in countries with Daylight Saving Time -DST- regulations) and Subtropical, pre-industrial societies with and without access to artificial light (data from nine locations coming from seven previous reports) against the cycle of light and dark. Within the two process model of sleep, results show sleep onset and sleep offset keep bound to each other by the homeostatic process. In winter, the photoreceptive process aligns the phase of the sleep/wake cycle to sunrise. As a result the phase increasingly lags with increasing latitude up to a delay of 120 min at 55° latitude. In summer, the homeostatic process still binds sleep onset to speep offset but DST rules in industrialized societies reduce the lag by one third to 40 min at 55° latitude. Sleep timing is then stationary with latitude. The phase of the sleep/wake cycle is then governed by natural trends and no clues of misalignment are revealed.
| S-EPMC6494851 | biostudies-other
Project description:Archaeological research has identified the use of cultivated cotton (Gossypium barbadense) in the ancient Andes dating back to at least 7800 years ago. Because of unusual circumstances of preservation, 6000-year-old cotton fabrics from the Preceramic site of Huaca Prieta on the north coast of Peru retained traces of a blue pigment that was analyzed and positively identified as an indigoid dye (indigotin), making it the earliest known use of indigo in the world, derived most likely from Indigofera spp. native to South America. This predates by ~1500 years the earliest reported use of indigo in the Old World, from Fifth Dynasty Egypt [ca. 4400 BP (before present)]. Indigo is one of the most valued and most globally widespread dyes of antiquity and of the present era (it being the blue of blue jeans).
| S-EPMC5023320 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The composition of species communities is changing rapidly through drivers such as habitat loss and climate change, with potentially serious consequences for the resilience of ecosystem functions on which humans depend. To assess such changes in resilience, we analyse trends in the frequency of species in Great Britain that provide key ecosystem functions--specifically decomposition, carbon sequestration, pollination, pest control and cultural values. For 4,424 species over four decades, there have been significant net declines among animal species that provide pollination, pest control and cultural values. Groups providing decomposition and carbon sequestration remain relatively stable, as fewer species are in decline and these are offset by large numbers of new arrivals into Great Britain. While there is general concern about degradation of a wide range of ecosystem functions, our results suggest actions should focus on particular functions for which there is evidence of substantial erosion of their resilience.
| S-EPMC4686828 | biostudies-other
Project description:The late pre-Hispanic period in the US Southwest (A.D. 1200-1450) was characterized by large-scale demographic changes, including long-distance migration and population aggregation. To reconstruct how these processes reshaped social networks, we compiled a comprehensive artifact database from major sites dating to this interval in the western Southwest. We combine social network analysis with geographic information systems approaches to reconstruct network dynamics over 250 y. We show how social networks were transformed across the region at previously undocumented spatial, temporal, and social scales. Using well-dated decorated ceramics, we track changes in network topology at 50-y intervals to show a dramatic shift in network density and settlement centrality from the northern to the southern Southwest after A.D. 1300. Both obsidian sourcing and ceramic data demonstrate that long-distance network relationships also shifted from north to south after migration. Surprisingly, social distance does not always correlate with spatial distance because of the presence of network relationships spanning long geographic distances. Our research shows how a large network in the southern Southwest grew and then collapsed, whereas networks became more fragmented in the northern Southwest but persisted. The study also illustrates how formal social network analysis may be applied to large-scale databases of material culture to illustrate multigenerational changes in network structure.
| S-EPMC3625298 | biostudies-other
Project description:Chemical analyses of organic residues in fragments of pottery from 18 sites in the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest reveal combinations of methylxanthines (caffeine, theobromine, and theophylline) indicative of stimulant drinks, probably concocted using either cacao or holly leaves and twigs. The results cover a time period from around A.D. 750-1400, and a spatial distribution from southern Colorado to northern Chihuahua. As with populations located throughout much of North and South America, groups in the US Southwest and Mexican Northwest likely consumed stimulant drinks in communal, ritual gatherings. The results have implications for economic and social relations among North American populations.
| S-EPMC4577151 | biostudies-other
Project description:Metallurgical activities have been undertaken in northern South America (NSA) for millennia. However, it is still unknown how far atmospheric emissions from these activities have been transported. Since the timing of metallurgical activities is currently estimated from scarce archaeological discoveries, the availability of reliable and continuous records to refine the timing of past metal deposition in South America is essential, as it provides an alternative to discontinuous archives, as well as evidence for global trace metal transport. We show in a peat record from Tierra del Fuego that anthropogenic metals likely have been emitted into the atmosphere and transported from NSA to southern South America (SSA) over the last 4200 yrs. These findings are supported by modern time back-trajectories from NSA to SSA. We further show that apparent anthropogenic Cu and Sb emissions predate any archaeological evidence for metallurgical activities. Lead and Sn were also emitted into the atmosphere as by-products of Inca and Spanish metallurgy, whereas local coal-gold rushes and the industrial revolution contributed to local contamination. We suggest that the onset of pre-Hispanic metallurgical activities is earlier than previously reported from archaeological records and that atmospheric emissions of metals were transported from NSA to SSA.
| S-EPMC4213032 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Cycles of demographic and organizational change are well documented in Neolithic societies, but the social and ecological processes underlying them are debated. Such periodicities are implicit in the "Pecos classification," a chronology for the pre-Hispanic U.S. Southwest introduced in Science in 1927 which is still widely used. To understand these periodicities, we analyzed 29,311 archaeological tree-ring dates from A.D. 500 to 1400 in the context of a novel high spatial resolution, annual reconstruction of the maize dry-farming niche for this same period. We argue that each of the Pecos periods initially incorporates an "exploration" phase, followed by a phase of "exploitation" of niches that are simultaneously ecological, cultural, and organizational. Exploitation phases characterized by demographic expansion and aggregation ended with climatically driven downturns in agricultural favorability, undermining important bases for social consensus. Exploration phases were times of socio-ecological niche discovery and development.
| S-EPMC4820384 | biostudies-other