Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Having a complex social structure in which individuals live in a colony and have specialized functions, with one or more females producing offspring and nonbreeding individuals cooperatively caring for the young, as in termites and many ants, bees, and wasps.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective biology Of or pertaining to certain social animals' societies (such as those of ants) in which sterile individuals work for reproductive individuals

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From eu- +‎ social.

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Examples

  • And bumblebees are what we call eusocial: they're not truly social, because only the queen is, over winter.

    Dennis vanEngelsdorp: a plea for bees Dennis vanEngelsdorp 2008

  • And bumblebees are what we call eusocial: they're not truly social, because only the queen is, over winter.

    Dennis vanEngelsdorp: a plea for bees Dennis vanEngelsdorp 2008

  • And bumblebees are what we call eusocial: they're not truly social, because only the queen is, over winter.

    Dennis vanEngelsdorp: a plea for bees Dennis vanEngelsdorp 2008

  • Ants - organised in colonies around one or many queens surrounded by their specialised female workers - are classic examples of what are called eusocial organisms.

    India eNews 2008

  • Naked Mole-Rats "A hot dog with teeth": the only known 'eusocial' mammal (i.e. it lives in colonies with a termite-like hierarchy).

    Wonderful & weird science Ray Girvan 2002

  • Naked Mole-Rats "A hot dog with teeth": the only known 'eusocial' mammal (i.e. it lives in colonies with a termite-like hierarchy).

    Archive 2002-04-01 Ray Girvan 2002

  • The word that describes them is "eusocial," a cooperative organization where one female and several males are reproductively active, while the rest of the members of the colony divide up the chores.

    U.S. News 2010

  • Much like ants, termites, and some bees and wasps, naked mole-rats are considered "eusocial," or truly social.

    KRDO.com 2010

  • Evolution of eusocial behavior: Offspring choice or parental parasitism?

    SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011

  • Before the emergence of eusocial insects, a solitary insect species would reproduce by what Wilson calls progressive provisioning.

    SuperCooperators Martin A. Nowak 2011

Comments

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  • I love this word.

    February 8, 2008

  • This could be a keyword in a social darwinist argument.

    December 20, 2008

  • Me Tarzan.

    December 21, 2008

  • Eusociality (Greek eu: "good" + "social") is a term used for the highest level of social organization in a hierarchical classification. The term "eusocial" was introduced in 1966 by Suzanne Batra1 and given a more definitive meaning by E. O. Wilson.2 It was originally defined to include those organisms (originally, only invertebrates) that had certain features:34

    1. Reproductive division of labor (with or without sterile castes)

    2. Overlapping generations

    3. Cooperative care of young

    The lower levels of social organization, presociality, were classified using different terms, including presocial, subsocial, semisocial, parasocial and quasisocial. ~Wikipedia

    January 19, 2009