Hilton Japyassu

In the book The Insect Societies, Wilson proposed categories of sociality that were presented as a landmark unification of
terminology in the study of social behavior. Since then, many new behavioral patterns have been described, but they could
not be fitted into any of the available categories, undermining the consensus around that well-established classification. New
general classifications tried to circumvent the limitations shown by Wilson’s categorization, but with little success. Among
the proposals, some maintain the form of discrete categorization, while others advance a quantitative model to characterize
sociality. These proposals have failed to clarify the use of the categories of sociality, and none of them has become widely
accepted or overcome the problems faced by the classification of social behaviors. Here we explore whether an analysis
of types of concepts proposed by Carnap can help to move forward in this discussion. His distinction between qualitative
concepts (classificatory and comparative) and quantitative concepts is used here as an epistemological basis for analyzing
the development of the proposed conceptual changes and classifications of sociality. Recently, social behavior has come
to be considered a complex phenomenon, and quantitative concepts could bring a lot of informative data to understanding
its development and perhaps its evolution. We conclude that a new metric of sociality should be built, using characteristics
that are nonarbitrary, evolutionarily meaningful, and amenable to comparing all social animals. Finally, we advocate for an
integrative view of social complexity based on individuals’ interactions as a useful metric of sociality. This approach still
needs further development.

Stereotyped behaviors have been routinely used as characters for phylogeny inference, but the same cannot be said of the plastic aspects of performance, which routinely are taken as a result of ecological processes. In this paper we examine the evolution of one of these plastic ...

Orbiculariae consists of two major clades: the cribellate Deinopoidea and the much more diverse ecribellate
Araneoidea. It has been hypothesized that the higher diversity of Araneoidea is a consequence of the superiority of the
viscid orb web. However, this explanation seems incomplete; for example, cribellate silk may perform better than viscid silk
in some contexts. Here, we consider the hypothesis that the diversification of Araneoidea was facilitated by changes in
microhabitat occupation behavior due to the cheaper viscid orb web. In the present work we investigate the idea that the
reduction in site tenacity caused by the emergence of the viscid orb web has led to an increase in the exploration of different
resources and to a greater diversification of the Araneoidea through the evolutionary time. To test this idea, we evaluated
the response of one cribellate orb web spider (Zosis geniculata Olivier 1789, Uloboridae) and one ecribellate orb web spider
(Metazygia rogenhoferi Keyserling 1878, Araneidae) to abrupt prey absence. The changes in site tenacity and the day-to-
day investment in web silk were evaluated. Spiders with three-dimensional webs tend to exhibit greater site tenacity than
spiders making orb webs. Zosis geniculata and M. rogenhoferi show similar site tenacity when prey is ample. When prey is
unavailable, the tenacity of the cribellate species increases while the tenacity of the ecribellate remains unchanged, and the
silk investment of both species decreases. However, this decrease in silk investment is more extensive in Z. geniculata. These results coincide with the idea that a less costly ecribellate orb web leads to a lower tenacity and suggest that more frequent
microhabitat abandonment in a context of insect radiation (Neoptera) leads to more diverse and opportunistic exploration
of microhabitats that, in the long term, may be one explanation for the greater Araneoidea diversification.

This article introduces the software program called EthoSeq, which is designed to extract probabilistic behavioral sequences (tree-generated sequences, or TGSs) from observational data and to prepare a TGS-species matrix for phylogenetic analysis. The program uses Graph Theory algorithms to automatically detect behavioral patterns within the observational sessions. It includes filtering tools to adjust the search procedure to user-specified statistical needs. Preliminary analyses of data sets, such as grooming sequences in birds and foraging tactics in spiders, uncover a large number of TGSs which together yield single phylogenetic trees. An example of the use of the program is our analysis of felid grooming sequences, in which we have obtained 1,386 felid grooming TGSs for seven species, resulting in a single phylogeny. These results show that behavior is definitely useful in phylogenetic analysis. EthoSeq simplifies and automates such analyses, uncovers much of the hidden patterns of long behavioral sequences, and prepares this data for further analysis with standard phylogenetic programs. We hope it will encourage many empirical studies on the evolution of behavior.

An inventory of the litter spider fauna was conducted in two areas of the Guarapiranga reservoir, São Paulo, SP: Parque dos Eucaliptos Island and Jardim Ângela, on the mainland. A comparison of the spider richness, abundance and composition between each area is made. Secondary Atlantic Forest is the main vegetation in both areas, although most of the Island is composed of Eucalyptus trees. Samplings with pitfall-traps were carried out every three months over a year. On the mainland, 1852 spiders were collected, of which 1423 adults, distributed in 21 families and 62 morphospecies. On the Parque dos Eucaliptos Island, 1119 spiders were collected, of which 748 were adults distributed in 18 families and 50 morphospecies. Of these, 26 morphospecies, belonging to 12 families, were common to both areas. The most abundant species was Brattia castanea Millidge, 1991 (Linyphidae) with 554 specimens. The family that presented the highest number of species was Theridiidae, with 18 species. Richness estimates were carried out using EstimateS 5.0. Bootstrap estimators yielded the lowest richness estimates for both mainland and island, with 73 and 58 species respectively. Chao2 presented the highest estimate for the mainland, with 135 species, while Jack 2 presented the highest estimate for the island, with 76 species.

This article introduces the software program called EthoSeq, which is designed to extract probabilistic behavioral sequences (tree-generated sequences, or TGSs) from observational data and to prepare a TGS-species matrix for phylogenetic analysis. The program uses Graph Theory algorithms to automatically detect behavioral patterns within the observational sessions. It includes filtering tools to adjust the search procedure to user-specified statistical needs. Preliminary analyses of data sets, such as grooming sequences in birds and foraging tactics in spiders, uncover a large number of TGSs which together yield single phylogenetic trees. An example of the use of the program is our analysis of felid grooming sequences, in which we have obtained 1,386 felid grooming TGSs for seven species, resulting in a single phylogeny. These results show that behavior is definitely useful in phylogenetic analysis. EthoSeq simplifies and automates such analyses, uncovers much of the hidden patterns of long behavioral sequences, and prepares this data for further analysis with standard phylogenetic programs. We hope it will encourage many empirical studies on the evolution of behavior.