Snapping social swimmers

摘要

THE ants of Death Valley (elevation — 86 m) remain the lowest expression of eusociality on Earth, but on page 512 of this issue J. E. Duffy describes eusocial colony organization in a snapping shrimp, Synalpheus regalis. which takes "the apex of animal social organization" to depths of a novel kind. This remarkable discovery establishes two new beachheads for eusociality: one is geographical (the oceans), and the other is taxonomic (class Crustacea, where eusociality was predicted to occur, but where it remained unknown before the appearance of Duffy's report).